Feline Green
by Ceallai
Summary: Set after the end of Season 3 (SPOILERS). Plagg gets disastrously ill, and with Master Fu gone, Ladybug is the only one who can make him better. Can Adrien find her without figuring out her identity?
1. Chapter 1

_Set after the end of Season 3._

Chapter 1

Plagg was ill, and Adrien was panicking. This had never happened before. He didn't even know kwamis _could_ get ill.

"Aren't you supposed to be immortal or something?" he whispered at Plagg as he hid in the locker room.

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean we can't get ill," Plagg had replied, moaning as he clutched his tiny stomach.

It had started that morning, when a kid from another class had gotten akumatized. He'd hidden in the bathroom as whoever it was roared through the building, transformed without consulting Plagg at all, and promptly threw up his breakfast. He'd quickly turned back, and found Plagg looking somewhat grey.

"You should have said something! What if Ladybug doesn't get here in-"

"MIRACULOUS LADYBUG!" he'd heard her shout somewhere out in the courtyard, and breathed a sigh of relief. This one had been easy, apparently.

Adrien had rounded on his kwami again. "Plagg, why didn't you tell me?"

"I – ugh – didn't wanna bother you -" at that moment Plagg had let out a sickening belch, the smell of which had Adrien stumbling out of the bathroom in nauseous horror. He'd glanced back as the door swang shut behind him and could have sworn he saw the paint peeling off the inside of it.

"You can't come into class with me if you're gonna do that," he'd muttered, running to the locker room. The students heading back to class watched him with vague curiosity, but none followed him.

A few minutes later, Adrien's locker was _melting _in a cloud of green haze.

"O-okay, forget school for now," Adrien said, holding his kwami gingerly and backing away from the disintegrating locker. He wondered what would happen if Plagg burped in his hands. Or in his shirt. He could afford to lose the shirt, but would the green haze penetrate to his skin?

"Plagg, you have to tell me what to do!" he said, running down the stairs as carefully as he could to avoid shaking his kwami too much. "I can't let you... _belch_ the whole school out of existence!"

"Oh, it could get way worse than that. This is how Atlantis happened," Plagg murmured, almost nostalgically.

"_Plagg_!"

"Only a Guardian can heal me," Plagg sighed, looking at him through half-shut eyes.

"What!" Adrien had arrived at the school's entrance. He glanced around in case anyone saw him, then tucked himself away behind the gate, which was always kept open during school hours in case of an akuma alert. "But Master Fu's gone! Ladybug's the Guardian now! And I don't even know where to find her!"

"I know," said Plagg huskily. "I'll – _urp_\- _PUT ME DOWN-_" Adrien almost dropped Plagg on the concrete steps just before the tiny creature vomited a tiny drop of green slime. The slime evaporated rapidly, but not before it had burned a hole in the steps, deep and wide enough that Adrien could have put his arm down there.

"Please tell me you're feeling better," Adrien begged, scooping his kwami into his shirt.

"Adrien?"

Adrien jumped half out of his skin at the sound of Marinette's voice, and he turned to find her smiling at him.

"M-Marinette! What are you doing here?"

"Madame Bustier sent me to look for you after the akuma attack. Are you okay?"

"Oh, sure! I was just..." he glanced at the hole in the ground behind him. "...I got stuck! My... foot, got stuck in that hole right there," he pointed it out to her, shifting Plagg from his shirt tail to his usual inside pocket as Marinette leaned over the hole, frowning at it. He hoped Plagg could keep his cheese down this time.

"How did that get there?" Marinette wondered.

"Maybe the akuma put it there?" Adrien suggested, edging around her.

"It wasn't that kind of akuma," she said, before adding, "Ladybug got here really fast so I didn't see it do much damage, but it was turning people into wild animals, not drilling holes in the ground." She wrinkled her nose as she stood. "And what's that smell?"

Adrien knew what he _should_ say, but somehow the idea of Marinette associating him with _that_ smell made him hesitate.

"Be careful," he said instead, taking her arm to pull her away from the hole. Marinette lost her balance, fell backwards against him, bounced off this chest, jumped three feet into the air and did an _honest-to-god pirouette_ before landing feet splayed with an embarassed shriek, her face entirely red. It was almost impressive and he couldn't help but laugh. She laughed nervously along with him.

"You go ahead, I promise I'll be right in," he said. "And try not to fall over. I just need to... tie my shoelaces," and he crouched down over his shoe before she could see that they were both tied perfectly.

Marinette squeaked "Sure!" and scuttled back through the school gates as Adrien pulled Plagg out of his inside pocket and set him down next to the hole.

"Think you could hide out here until lunch break, little buddy?" he asked.

"You're_ leaving me_?" Plagg laid one tiny paw laid melodramatically across his forehead. "I'll never survive! Or rather, _you'll_ never survive. This whole school could be completely destroyed by lunch time."

"Then tell me how to find Ladybug, quick!" Adrien hissed.

"She's, um," Plagg swallowed hard, from nerves or nausea, it was hard to tell. "She won't be home now anyway," he said. "Besides, you can't transform while I'm ill, and if she sees you like this, she'll know your secret identity."

"You just said if I left you like this then the school might be destroyed!"

"Fine, fine," Plagg grumbled. "Give me a minute to come up with a plan."

"A-Adrien?" Marinette was coming back. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Coming!" Adrien called. "Hurry up," he muttered to Plagg.

"Okay, here's the plan," said Plagg, and what he said next made absolutely no sense to Adrien.

"What? You want me to – but that would – she would know!"

"Multimouse's identity was compromised anyway, but only you and Ladybug saw her detransform," Plagg spoke quickly. "She won't be a target for Hawkmoth. I'll find a way to get her to give me to Ladybug without her finding out who it is – urp." He swallowed hard.

"Why can't I just take you to Ladybug?" Adrien said, trying to ignore the nausea now rising in _his_ throat.

"You can't know each others' identities!"

"But Marinette can?"

"Just tell her Cat Noir gave me to you!"

"So... Cat Noir gave you to me to give to Marinette to give to Ladybug? And two people knowing our identities would be less risky because...?"

"Because if Hawkmoth caught her, she would only be able to give away Ladybug's identity, not yours! Besides, Marinette is trustworthy, right?"

"Who are you talking to?" Marinette leaned over just as Adrien stood up and he banged his head on her chin.

"OW! Are you okay?" They both cried out at once. Marinette laughed painfully, but Adrien frowned as he looked at her. He reached out, and before she had time to jump away or fall over or whatever Marinette usually did, he brushed her bottom lip with his thumb. It came away bloody.

"It's fine," Marinette squeaked, at the same time as Adrien said "I'm so sorry!" He patted himself down frantically before producing a packet of tissues. "Here, let me..."

"It's really okay, I..." she trailed off and stared up at him as he cupped her face in one hand while dabbing gently at the cut.

"I'm really sorry," he repeated.

"Uh huh," Marinette sighed breathily. She looked a bit red. Was she trying not to cry? He didn't know what he'd do if she cried.

"Maybe I should take you to the school nurse?" he said.

"N-nooo, I'll be fine, really!"

Adrien remembered what Plagg had said, and sighed inwardly. "I insist," he said. Before she could protest, he had his arm around her shoulders and was steering her back into the courtyard.

The nurse's office was always always empty first thing in the morning because that's when Sebastien, the nurse, went out for his morning smoke and coffee. Adrien knew this because the nurse's office, being smaller, was often a more private a spot to transform in during an akuma attack than the bathroom.

Sure enough, Sebastien was out. Adrien, ignoring Marinette's reassurances, rummaged through the first aid kit on the desk until he found antiseptic and gauze. She stopped talking when he tilted her chin in order to dab at the cut. It was clotting already, but a trickle of blood had made its way down her chin, and he pretended to concentrate on cleaning that up while his mind raced over what exactly he should say next.

"Marinette, can I ask you something?" He tossed the gauze in the bin and looked at her properly. She was staring at him, frozen in place, and he wondered if he was doing the right thing. "Marinette?"

"Nn?" she squeaked. Adrien kind of understood why Ladybug had given her the mouse miraculous. That had been a really complicated mission, come to think of it. And she hadn't talked to anyone about it, he was sure. Not even Alya, her best friend, who would have been ecstatic to get an exclusive interview with a one-time miraculous holder. She could have, since Ladybug had said she wouldn't entrust her with a miraculous again, but... she hadn't.

Adrien took a deep breath.

"I... didn't just bring you here to clean your cut," he finally admitted. "I needed to talk to you somewhere private because..." Her eyes widened. "...Someone asked me to give you this." He took her hand in his, palm facing up, and, his heart jackhammering in his chest, he fished Plagg out of his inside shirt pocket and placed him there.

If Marinette's eyes had been wide before, they were saucer-sized now.

"This-! This is-!"

"A kwami, yes, I know."

"You're-?!"

"Cat Noir told me to give it to you," he added quickly, before she could jump to the right conclusion. "His kwami's sick, and Cat Noir wants you to give it him to Ladybug. He can't transform with his kwami in this state. He even had to show me his true identity to do it, and you... he said you'd know where to find Ladybug. I don't know if you know her true identity, but at least this way, neither of us knows who both of them are."

Marinette was staring open-mouthed at the miniature cat in her hand. Plagg was curled into a ball, trembling.

"He's... hot," she finally said.

"Only Ladybug can make him better," Adrien said. "That's what Cat Noir told me, anyway."

She looked back up at him suddenly, and he was surprised to see anger in her eyes. "Is he _insane_?! How could he just give himself away to... to... I mean," she amended, as Adrien backed away slightly, "Not that you're not trustworthy, I'm know you are, and I know I am, well I mean – but -" she took a deep breath. "Wouldn't it have been better to just take Pl- the kwami to her himself?"

"They don't know each others' identities," Adrien said. "And since than they're Hawkmoth's main targets, it has to stay that way, right?"

Marinette opened her mouth, and Plagg chose that moment to let out another burp.

Marinette turned a pale shade of green and retched into the sink next to her, almost dropping the kwami. Adrien held his breath, grabbed her arm, and was about to pull her out of the nurse's office when he ran headlong into the nurse himself.

"What are you- AUGHH!" The nurse coughed and backed out of the room, allowing the two students to escape. "Which one of you did that in my office? That's inhuman!"

"It wasn't us, I swear!" Adrien shouted over his shoulder.

"Whoever it was, go home!" Sebastien called back. "Nobody wants _that_ going round school!"


	2. Chapter 2

This one's shorter than the last, but I decided to stop here so I can switch between POVs. Very rough again, may be edited later.

They were back on the steps, taking huge gulps of parisian air and relishing it.

"What..." Marinette gasped. _"What was that?"_

"A sick kwami, apparently," Adrien choked out.

Marinette sat on the steps and opened her hand. It was empty.

"Oh no, I dropped him!"

"Here," Plagg wheezed, floating a few centimeters above the ground to her left. She cupped her hands so that he could land in them again.

"I'm so sorry I dropped you," Marinette said.

"It's a good thing you did," said Adrien. "That hole in the ground?" He pointed. "That was him."

Marinette put the kwami down on the steps rather hastily. "O-okay," she said, her mind racing. She had so many questions, but she had to figure out how Marinette would ask them. "So, I'm supposed to bring him to Ladybug?" she started. "She'll... know what to do?"

"Apparently."

Marinette stared at the miniature cat. _She did not know what to do._ Master Fu hadn't gotten around to teaching her how to heal kwamis. "A-are you sure about this?" she asked.

"Of course," said Adrien. "Who else would know what to do with a sick kwami?"

Marinette tried not to let the panic show on her face. "Right!" she said. "Of course. Let me just... figure out how to take him to her first." In a way, this was far worse than an akuma attack. If Plagg melted her bag or – worse – _her_, there would be no reversing the effects afterwards. "Any idea of what I can put him in?"

"Oh!" said Adrien, and he pulled off his ring and gave it to her. Plagg disappeared into it as she watched, leaving just a silver ring in the palm of her hand. The ring she saw him wear every day.

"Adrien," she said before she could stop herself, "isn't that the ring you always wear?"

"Uh, no!" he almost shouted. "Mine's, um, a replica! Cat Noir's ring is really cool, so I had one made that was similar!" He laughed nervously, and she sighed in relief as he continued to babble. "I didn't bring mine today because, you know, it would be weird if I wore both of them, right?"

"I guess you really like Cat Noir, huh?" she teased.

"Oh yeah, he's awesome. Not as awesome as Ladybug, of course, but still awesome."

Marinette had no idea Adrien liked superheroes so much. She made a mental note to ask Alya for some comics to lend him.

"So, do you know how to find her?" Adrien asked.

Marinette's smile faded. "I do," she said.

Adrien waited a beat before asking "...Do you think maybe we could go there right now?"

"Not _we_," she corrected, "You're not supposed to know who she is, remember?"

"Right," he said. "But, um. It's kind of urgent? I'm sorry, I know we have school, but Cat Noir asked for you specifically, and what if there's another akuma attack? Ladybug took care of the last one, but two in a row? And even if she does manage on her own, Hawkmoth might catch onto the fact that Cat Noir is out of action..."

"You're right," Marinette said, standing up and finally accepting that there was no way out of this. "I'll go now. You go back to class, Adrien. Tell them I went home sick."

"Thanks Marinette," said Adrien, looking relieved. "I'll lend you my notes!"

"Thank _you_ Adrien," said Marinette, already running across the street. She slipped the ring into her bag. "Hold this for me, Tikki" she whispered, "And get ready to transform!"

Ladybug detransformed from the other side of the park and walked home, rehearsing the lie in her head. She didn't have the time or materials to fake a fever, but she had to make it seem like all she needed was sleep. Her dad especially tended to get very overprotective when she got sick.

She needn't have worried.

"Hey honey, what are you doing home?" her mother asked.

"Hi Maman. I got sick," she said. "Probably something I ate. I'm feeling better, but I'm really tired, so they sent me home just in case."

"Oh, poor dear," Her mother came around the counter and put her hand on her forehead. "No fever. If you're feeling better, it's probably food poisoning. Any idea what it could be?" She frowned. "Nothing from the bakery, I hope."

"No, Maman, I'm pretty sure it was something I ate at school," Marinette said. "Alya and I traded sandwiches yesterday." Marinette was sometimes a little disturbed with how easily lying to her parents had become.

"You always did have a sensitive stomach," Sabine tutted. "Just like your father. Well, get to bed. Your body needs to recover."

"Okay Maman," said Marinette, yawning. She just about managed not to race up the stairs and slam the trap door shut.

"Tikki, help!" she whisper-screamed, as soon as they were alone.

Tikki flew out of the bag carrying the ring. "What's the matter?" she asked.

"Master Fu never taught me how to heal kwamis!"

Tikki gasped and clutched the ring to her chest. "Oh no! How are you going to heal Plagg?"

"I don't know! And I'm so scared Tikki, what if he's sick in my house? This is the top floor, and if that hole in the school steps was anything to go by, that... goo, would go right down to the basement and beyond!"

"Passing through whatever's in its way," Tikki said. "Floors, walls, countertops..."

"My parents!"

"Well, just your mother for now," Tikki tried to reassure her. "Maybe we could get her out of the bakery somehow?"

"First I need to figure out how to heal him," Marinette said. "Wait! I know!"

She rummaged through the mess at her sewing station and found her tablet. After closing several Pinterest windows and that Adrien-le-parfum ad she still watched once every morning before school (for spiritual reasons, she said when Tikki asked), she found the encrypted file with the scans of the Guardian manual in it, typed in the password (4dr13n4gr3573h0757uff) and began swiping through it. There wasn't a contents page of any sort, but there were a few sections she hadn't gotten round to decifering yet – and Master Fu had begun to teach her how to read the code.

She grabbed a pen and her notebook too and climbed up to her bed, just in case her mother decided to check on her. She had a feeling it was going to be a long day. She just hoped Hawkmoth didn't think to akumatize anyone in that time...


	3. Chapter 3

Of course Hawkmoth would have to akumatize someone _now_, at the worst possible time.

"Doesn't he have a job?" Adrien muttered. "Or a life?"

He signalled for Nino to go ahead without him and ducked under his desk, pretending to tie his shoelace – again – while the rest of the class filed out, chatting. Akuma attacks were commonplace enough that nobody really panicked any more unless they were in the damage zone, and this one had been declared at Trocadero square.

He'd never get there on time. Even if he did, what could he do without his miraculous? He couldn't even call Ladybug without his stick phone.

If he couldn't call Ladybug, he'd have to call Marinette.

"H-h-Adrien?" she answered, sounding a little panicked.

"Marinette! Did you manage to find her?"

"Who, Ladybug? Uh, sure, yes, I'm with her right now!"

"Wha- you're _with_ Ladybug? Isn't she off fighting the akuma at Trocadero right now?"

There was a silence.

"Marinette? Are you okay?" Ladybug wouldn't have left her alone with Plagg sick, would she? Had she at least put him back in the ring before she left?

"Yes! Yes, I'm fine! But I have to go – hide -"

"Is Ladybug-?"

"She's on her way! Ti-" The line went dead. Adrien blinked at his phone for a second before remembering why he'd called Marinette in the first place. He tried to call her back, but only got her voicemail. He had to find her, get his ring back, and at least make an appearance, before Hawkmoth caught on and did something big. But how?

_Make an appearance_, he thought. _There's an idea._

"C'mon, Plagg," he said, and then he remembered and felt stupid.

He jumped down the stairs into the now deserted courtyard and out the gates; sure enough, his bodyguard was pulling up. He jumped into the car. "Get me home as fast as you can! Please!"

The Gorilla raised his eyebrows and grunted – that had been the plan, obviously. Adrien fastened his seatbelt as the car silently manoevered through narrow one-way streets, taking a long and complicated – but ultimately quicker – route back to the Agreste mansion. The hardest part would be getting back out of the house. He ran through the details of his plan in his mind. It was almost as complicated as one of Ladybug's Lucky Charm plans, only he wasn't as clever as Ladybug. He really hoped this would work.

"Gather round, children! Haven't you ever wanted to be the ones in charge? Or is that too much _responsibility_!"

The akuma villain was no longer at Trocadéro. She was moving from school to school – mostly primary schools, according to the news report – and was shooting at the screaming crowds of parents coming to pick up their children. The people getting shot seemed unharmed, but there was a lot of confusion and crying going on, and Ladybug was having trouble figuring out exactly what the akuma was doing to them.

She opened her yoyo's phone function and used it to focus more closely on the crowd below. The parents and teachers all seemed bewildered or disoriented; many were crying, although some were running around the playground like... well, like kids. The kids were acting strangely, too. They were trying to get the adults' attention, pulling on their hands and talking to them frantically as they led them to safety.

"The kids are acting like parents!" she said, before remembering that Chat Noir wasn't there to help her. "She must be exchanging them, like in that movie..."

She focussed on the villain again. She was smaller than Ladybug, around the size of a ten-year-old, and she was zipping through the streets on what appeared to be an ordinary skateboard, until she jumped up in the air with it and hovered there, laughing maniacally.

"Boys and girls, it's time to give your parents a break! Let them be the kids for once – it's the least you could do to thank us for _giving you life_!"

_Us_? Ladybug thought, as the villain shot into the crowd again. Swallowing the urge to dive in before she knew exactly what was happening, Ladybug focussed on the gun itself. It was green and translucent, and filled with a glowing liquid. When shot out, the liquid seemed to separate into two streams and hit two people at once – a child and an adult.

_Maybe the akuma is in the water gun?_ She thought, but something else something caught her eye. A man and a woman were crouching behind a parked car. The man was sobbing into his hands, and the woman had her arm around him and was waving at her. They both had the same dark curls and olive faces, and she guessed that they might be siblings. Their parents – or the children they'd been turned into – were nowhere in sight.

She yoyo'd down, but the villain heard her and turned.

"Ladybug!" she shouted. "A teenager! They're the worst of all!" She raised her gun, and Ladybug had to dive to avoid her shots. She lead the villain down a side street and away from the school. The locals had wisely shut themselves inside their homes, and the street was narrow enough for Ladybug to bounce from wall to wall across it fast.

"Running to _maman_?" the villain mocked.

"Like I'd let you anywhere near my mother!" Ladybug shouted back.

She burst into a square and almost thought she'd made a mistake when she saw the small playground in the middle of it, but it seemed deserted. She landed on top of the climbing frame, shot her yoyo back towards the villain, caught the gun and pulled hard. It broke, shining liquid spilling on the ground, but no purple butterfly came out.

The villain cackled. "Bad girl, breaking others' toys!" she said, as a purple cloud surrounded her hands. When it dissipated, she was holding two guns.

_Uh oh._

"Now I have more than enough for you and your kitten!" she cried. "Where is he, by the way? Dodging his duties?"

"The only thing I'm dodging tonight are your shots," came a familiar voice from from below them.

Ladybug gasped. Chat Noir? What we he doing here? _How_ was he here?

Chat Noir winked up at her with very un-cat-like eyes, and her heart did a backflip as she realized the risk he'd taken.

She had to protect him.

The villain sniggered, pointing her other gun at him, but she took her eye off Ladybug to do it. Ladybug jumped forward and threw her yoyo again, aiming for the skateboard this time – she missed by mere inches.

"I can't take my eye off you for a second!" she shouted, shooting at them both. They dived under the climbing frame.

_"Are you crazy?_" Ladybug hissed, pulling him into the play house.

"Playing house, Bugaboo?" he smirked as she slammed the door and window shut.

"This is no time for games!"

"It _is_ a bit small in here."

"More like we're too big – Ah!" she yelped as a flash of glowing liquid shot under the door, splattering the ground.

"The floor is lava!" Chat said, scrambling up on the only bench in the room. Ladybug pulled her feet up on the table only to jump away as the window above it suddenly glowed, too, landing against Chat Noir.

"Come out and play, children!" the villain taunted from outside.

"Aahh-I'm losing my balance!" Chat Noir cried, and she felt him slipping against her back. She caught him against her arm, pushing it into the wall and she shoved herself backwards, holding him up with her body and trying not to touch the floor, table or window.

"Ouch!"

"Sorry," she growled, not feeling sorry at all. "Hang onto the walls or something!"

"My animal magnetism doesn't work on walls!" She felt him scrabbling behind her. Finally he managed to perch on the bench, and as soon as he was no longer leaning on her, she did the same, avoiding the white glowing goo.

"We really could've used your cataclysm right now," she grumbled.

"I dunno, I kinda like it in here," he murmured next to her ear.

"Did you just come to flirt?" she snapped. "You should have stayed home! I can't capture the akuma and protect you at the same time!"

"I had to at least make an appearance," he said, hurt. "Two akumas in a row with no Chat Noir, Hawkmoth would start to notice."

"Maybe, maybe not, but with no powers and your eyes looking like _that_ he will!"

This apparently rendered him speechless, and she took her attention off him in order to figure out a plan. She could hear the villain calling for children and their parents to come and play with her, her voice sometimes getting further away before flying over them again. Maybe she thought she'd gotten them. But then, why wasn't she coming for their miraculouses?

"You stay here," she said. "I'll distract her, and when you can, make a break for it."

He remained silent, and Ladybug craned her neck to see his face in the eerie half-light. Her heart twisted. He looked like he was about to cry.

"Kitty, please," she shifted gingerly on the bench so that she was half-facing him. "I'm sorry for what I said, that was really mean of me."

"No, you were right," he whispered with a half-smile, not looking at her. "I should have stayed home. You could have taken anything Hawkmoth threw at you anyway."

"That's not true," she said. "Besides, I'd never have time to heal Plagg if I had to fight akumas all the time. I'd get exhausted and end up losing, and that would be a disaster."

"But what if he notices anyway? You're right, I don't have my powers, or my cat eyes."

"Then we'll just have to make him _think_ you do," she said. He smiled properly this time, and she felt relieved. He may not have his powers, but Chat Noir would always have her back.

They would need help for this.

"Lucky charm!" she called, struggling to throw up her yoyo in the tiny space. She caught the thing that fell into her hand. "A screwdriver?"

"Surprisingly straightforward, for once," Chat Noir said.

"_You_ know what to do with this?"

"Of course!" He took the screwdriver from her hand and began working on the screws holding up the wall they were leaning against.

"Oh," she said, feeling reluctantly impressed. "I guess that works. Don't unscrew them all the way yet."

A minute later, Chat Noir shouted "Cataclysm!" and they burst through the wall, separating as they came out from under the climbing frame. Chat Noir ran for cover and Ladybug went straight for the villain.

"I don't think so!" The villain dodged her yoyo and high-kicked Ladybug across the park. She landed in a tree, groaning.

"Ladybug! Are you alright?" said a male voice that _wasn't_ Chat Noir's. Hands reached up to help her down.

"Monsieur Ramier? What are you still doing here?"

"Ahah!" The villain crowed. "Monsieur Ramier! How would _you_ like to take Ladybug's place?"

She aimed at them both as Ladybug dived away from Monsieur Ramier, but this time she was a split-second too late. Ladybug barely had time to register the glowing splatter on her shoulder before everything went black.


	4. Chapter 4

Adrien blinked. Everything felt different, in so many ways that he couldn't begin to count them, even if he'd had the time, which he didn't. The villain – he hadn't caught her name – was swooping down on a black-clad figure lying motionless in Monsieur Ramier's lap. Monsieur Ramier was staring into space, arms limp by his side, twitching.

Adrien reached down for his baton and found a yoyo in its place. Of course. He flexed his hands – _her hands_ – in their red gloves and gripped the yoyo, hoping he remembered the knack of it. Reflekdoll had been months ago.

The villain screamed as he raised his arm, and he paused. A pigeon was flying around the villain's head, pecking and scratching, driving her away from her prey as though defending its nest.

"Hey, Babyface!" he yelled in a voice that was a good octave higher than usual. The pigeon dodged out to the way just before he threw the yoyo, caught the villain with it, and hurled her across the square before heaving his own body (hopefully with Ladybug in it) onto his back. "Thanks, Pigeon!" he yelled as he ran past, yoyo back in hand, ready to carry them somewhere safe.

_Somewhere safe, somewhere safe..._

He finally put her down in the sewers. It was the only place that had almost always proven villain-proof, and it was usually deserted. He laid his own body down on the cold concrete and adjusted the mask, which had almost come off.

He patted his own cheek, trying to ignore the odd feeling of displacement that was creeping over him. "Ladybug? Are you in there?"

His body's nose scrunched up in an expression he'd never seen on himself before, and then its eyes flew open as it sat bolt upright.

"Chat Noir!" his own voice cried out.

"Shh, I'm here," he said, putting his – _her_ – hands on her – _his_ – shoulders.

She stared at him, wide-eyed, and he almost felt like laughing at his own expression. "But you're... me?" she put a hand to her throat, coughed, and said, "What's up with my voice? Is this one of those time travel things again?"

"No, we just got swapped," he said. "Babyface or whatever she's called shot at you and Monsieur Ramier, but she got me instead. Lucky you," he grinned.

She looked down at her – _his_ – body, and jumped to her feet. "Oh no!" she cried. "Oh no oh no oh no! How am I supposed to -"

There was a fast beep, and the next thing he knew, she was was covering his eyes. With _his_ hand. "You're about to detransform, Chat Noir! Close your eyes!"

"What? Why?"

"You might recognize my clothes!"

"So we do know each other in real life!" he crowed.

"No! I mean, I don't know!"

"Wait, do you know who I am?"

"No! Shut up! Stop asking questions! You know we can't know each others' identities as long as Hawkmoth is around!"

He pouted, but let his eyes close. His lashes brushed her hand. They must be long.

_If she doesn't know who I am then I must have met her as Chat Noir, _he thought as she removed her hand, his mind going over all the girls he'd met more than once as Chat Noir. There were a lot. Had she been akumatized more than once maybe?

The detransformation washed over him suddenly and he felt himself shrink slightly – he guessed his wasn't the only costume that made him taller – and marvelled at the new sensations, heightened as they were by the lack of anything to see. The cold sharpened on his skin and he shivered, his scalp prickling with goosebumps. He realised he still had Ladybug's pigtails. _Does she wear pigtails as a civilian, too? All the time, or just today?_

"Stay still," she said. He felt her fiddle with something at his side, pulling on his opposite shoulder – a handbag. "Here, Tikki." Small munching noises.

"Hi Tikki," he said, smiling.

"Hewwo !" Tikki replied, over a mouthful of something. She swallowed. "It's nice to meet you again!"

"You too, but I never thought it'd happen like this," he laughed, and it was her laugh. He did it again because he liked the sound of it.

"How are you both not panicking right now?" Ladybug hissed.

"No point panicking, Milady. It's simple: I'll defeat the villain and capture the akuma while you hide out here."

"No way," she said flatly.

"Do you have a better plan?"

She let out the kind of exasperated groan he usually reserved for when Plagg was being a pain, and he heard the scrape of leather on concrete as she slid down the wall.

"Hey, careful with that costume. It's custom made."

She made a huffing sound that might have been laughter. "Why do you have a custom Chat Noir costume when you can just transform any time?" she asked, before adding, "actually don't answer that. The less I know about you the better."

"_Suit_ yourself, milady," he said, and he could almost feel her look of disgust at the pun. Adrien bit back another grin. Now was definitely not the time. "Listen, you trust me, right?" he said.

"Of course I do," she said. "It's just... it's like Reflekdoll all over again. Except this time, you're on your own. And you don't just have to get used to the costume, you also have..."

"Your body?" he finished. "It'll be fine. Aren't you a little too worried about this?"

"But don't you feel _weird_ right now?" she asked. "I do! I feel way too tall! And my hands and feet are so big. I can barely dare to walk, what if I trip over?"

"I guess being transformed helped me to adapt. That's why you're going to stay here while I deal with the akuma," he said.

"Why can't I just go? As... as Mister Bug?"

Ouch. "You really don't trust me, do you?"

"No! I mean, yes, I do! It's just..." she sighed. "I feel responsible. The truth is, Master Fu never got round to teaching me how to heal kwamis -"

"Wait, seriously?" Adrien's heart plummetted.

" Yes, but he did start teaching me how to read the book of the Guardians-"

Wait. "There's a _book_?" The book he'd stolen from his father jumped to mind suddenly along with several urgent questions, the most important one being, _could she use the book to heal Plagg?_

"Yes, and I've been spending all morning trying to decifer it!"

Adrien breathed a sigh of relief. If there was some kind of instruction manual, his lady would definitely figure it out eventually.

"-But it's hard!" she continued. "And I keep thinking, maybe if I'd paid more attention or made more time to learn while he was still there or _something_, then we wouldn't be in this mess. I mean, what if I never manage to heal Plagg? Or what if it takes months? Years! You can't just run around vulnerable for all that time! What if I get it wrong and make him worse and he cataclysms Paris right off the map? What if-"

"Ladybug! Hey!" Adrien reached down and felt his way into a seating position next to her, patting in her direction until he found an arm and pulled her into a hug. She let herself fall against him, and he almost fell backwards, his eyes flying open for a split second before he caught himself.

"Sorry!" she said, pulling away. "My body's... not very coordinated. I should have warned you."

_Civilian Ladybug is _clumsy?

"It's okay," he said. "I guess I wasn't expecting the weight difference. C'mere." He felt his way around her shoulders and pulled her towards him. She leaned against him hesitantly, smelling of leather, his own shampoo, the laundry detergent they used at home. And cheese. To his surprise though, the cheese smell was faint. When he was in that body, it felt like cheese was all he _could_ smell.

That was reassuring.

"I get that you feel responsible," he said. "But you can't stop me from doing what makes the most sense because of that. If you went out as Mister Bug then Hawkmoth would definitely know there was something wrong with the Cat miraculous. It has to be Ladybug. Then he'll just think I'm unconscious somewhere."

She sat up suddenly. "What if I got you another miraculous?"

He gasped. Of course! "Do you have one on you?"

"I could get one from..." she trailed off.

"What?"

"From home," she finished. "I'd have to give you my address. Or go out as Mister Bug and risk being seen. If I'd known you'd come, I'd have brought one, but..."

They both sighed, and he felt her slump against him.

"You know," he said, wondering if this was a good idea, "sometimes I think it would be better if we did know our true identities. I mean... you said I'd recognize your clothes. Have I ever saved you?" She didn't reply, and he continued, "Because you've saved me. A few times, actually. You put yourself at risk to do it. And..." he remembered the time she almost gave Volpina her miraculous to save a mirage of him, but that was too specific. "Just, I feel like if we knew, it would be easier. You would have known to just drop me off somewhere so I could transform and help you. And I could have taken Plagg straight to you, without going through other people and putting them at risk." He didn't say that the idea that Marinette knew who Ladybug was and he didn't made him feel incredibly jealous.

He felt her shift, her huge boy's body creaking with leather in the circle of his slender arms. He got the feeling she was looking at him.

"I'm ready!" Tikki said, cutting their discussion short.

"Right," said Adrien. "Me too."

"Wait!" said Ladybug, and she grabbed his shoulders. His heart beat a little faster, wondering if he'd finally managed to convince her.

"Just... how are you going to beat her?" She asked.

Adrien deflated a bit. "I dunno, I'll improvise," he said.

"No! You can't afford to improvise this one Chat Noir, what if she gets you again and you end up swapping with a baby?"

He sighed. "Fine. What do you want to do?"

She paused.

"Okay, where are we exactly?" she said after a moment.

"In the sewers?"

"_Where_ in the sewers?"

"Trocadéro," he said, "where she got akumatized. It's been evacuated."

"Okay," she said. "Okay. I have a plan. Think you can bring her back here?"

"Sure."

"Good," she said. "Here's what we're gonna do..."


	5. Chapter 5

Trocadero square was deserted and the fountains lay still. Marinette crouched in the shadow of a small tree nearby and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

As she waited, she tried very, very hard not to think about the body she was inhabiting. Because if she thought about that, then she'd remember Chat Noir gently telling her in her own voice – like the voice of reason in her head – why they should know each others' identities, and if she remembered that, she might start to think he was right.

Also, she was inhabiting a _boy's body, _which was fascinating and terrifying in equal measure. Everything seemed slightly oversized, and she'd been afraid she might trip and fall into the sewer water if she tried to walk, but thanks to the wonders of muscle memory, that hadn't happened. In fact, this body felt far more stable than her own. More coordinated. Stronger. She flexed her right bicep, feeling the muscle bulge under the black leather.

_Stop it. Concentrate._

The mask was making her forehead itch. She readjusted it, pushing blond hair out of the way. It was very, very strange to see blond hair just at the top of her vision – which was ever-so-slightly long-sighted, she'd noticed.

Then there were the smells: an oddly familiar laundry smell (perhaps Alya or one of her other friends used the same detergent), mens' shower gel, with distinctly cheesy undertones – the downside of being Plagg's bearer, she assumed. She found it odd that she loved the smell of the leather catsuit, whereas in her own body, the smell of leather left her indifferent.

But that wasn't the weirdest thing. The weirdest thing had been when she'd leaned against Chat Noir and the smell of _her_ shampoo had quickened her heartbeat. When he'd hugged her, she'd felt like a starved plant being watered. She'd had to stop herself from nuzzling him.

Marinette didn't know how to feel about these unwanted revelations. They shouldn't be important. She'd known Chat Noir was in love with her before, he'd made it more than clear enough. But it was one thing to know it in her mind, and quite another to feel what _he_ felt when she touched him.

Maybe she should hug him more often. Maybe she should stop hugging him forever.

She wished Tikki were here.

A flash of red at the corner of her eye. _Finally_. She watched herself swing down from the Eiffel Tower, leap across the Seine, and sprint towards the trees on the opposite side of the fountain. She tried to look for differences, but Chat Noir looked just looked like her. No cat-like behaviour, no trouble using the yoyo. Muscle memory truly was amazing – he was practically _her_ right then.

He reached a tree, turning to look for her, then winked and pointed finger guns at her before scampering up into the branches.

So maybe not _exactly_ her.

Less than a minute later, the akuma – whose name, according to the news, was Bodyswapper – hovered silently into view. Glancing around suspiciously, she circled the park, taking a winding route over the trees. She paused right above Marinette. Marinette stuffed her hand into her mouth, willing her body to be still and quiet. She missed her dark hair. Blond wasn't good chamoflage.

Glowing light splattered the ground right in front of her, and Marinette bit back a yelp. She'd managed not to move. Drops of it touched the tips of her boots, but since it hadn't touched her skin, it didn't seem to matter. She waited until Bodyswapper floated away before scuffing the boots in the dirt.

The villain was halfway to the trees where Chat Noir was hiding, much more conspicuous in red and black, when she glanced down and paused. Marinette allowed herself a tiny whispered _"yesss"_ as Bodyswapper hovered closer to the water where they'd dropped the fake Chat Noir ring. As she crouched on her skateboard to reach down, a red yoyo shot out of the trees, and Marinette ran as fast as she could towards the fountain.

The next few seconds were a blur: Bodyswapper only had time to curse before Chat Noir was on her, yoyo-ing her hands together and pulling them down into the water with a splash. The water glowed white as the villain tried to shoot, and Chat Noir, holding her down with both hands as she struggled and screamed, tried to kick the skateboard of her feet, but it appeared to be stuck.

Marinette reached the fountain at that moment and tried to hit the skateboard with her baton, but it without her superpowers it was a lot harder than usual to aim and hit hard enough, especially when the villain kept thrashing about.

"Hurry!" Chat Noir cried over his shoulder, struggling to keep Bodyswappers hands in the water without actually drowning her. Marinette edged closer only to be kicked away, landing on her back with a splash of shallow water that barely cushioned her fall at all. _Ow ow ow_. Wet leather was hard to move in, not to mention gross, and now she was sure she'd have a massive bruise on her backside after this – or Chat Noir would, anyway. Battling without powers was _hard_.

Time to end this, heal Plagg, and get everything back to normal.

She got back up, grabbed her baton, and ran at the villain with a war cry. The baton smashed into the skateboard, which finally broke. A purple butterfly phased out of the ruins of it.

"Chat Noir, _now_!" she shouted. Chat Noir released the now immobile akuma victim and caught the butterfly, purifying it. Then he threw the yoyo up in the air with a triumphant cry of "Miraculous Ladybug!" and closed his eyes as the ladybugs purified everything, waiting for them to change back.

The switch back felt like a jolt, and she opened her eyes and looked down at her lovely, slender, red-clad hands in wonder and delight.

"Woohoo!" she heard Chat Noir cry, and she turned to grin at him.

Her heart stopped.

_Oh no._

_No!_

Standing just a few feet away in a dripping leather catsuit, pushing sopping wet hair out of his summer-green eyes and wearing no mask whatsoever, was Adrien Agreste.


	6. Chapter 6

**SURPRISE! You get two chapters today, because I was really motivated and also tomorrow I'm going on a long drive to spend Christmas with my family and I probably won't have time to write much while I'm away. Not that I have a set schedule or anything, but I'll probably be gone for a week, maybe two. Enjoy some post-semi-reveal Ladrien!**

Adrien realised his mask was missing at the exact same moment Ladybug did.

For a long moment they stared at each other, their minds blank with panic.

Then the middle-aged woman who had been Bodyswapper groaned and sat up, and before he had time to say "oof!" Ladybug had caught him round the middle and was carrying him into the trees.

"Don't let anyone see you," she whispered, setting him down on a branch. He nodded, but she was already running back to the fountain, her yoyo out in phone mode to call for help.

Adrien watched as the reporters arrived first. He'd barely managed to convince them to wait for them to finish the job, insisting on the fact that Trocadero had to be completely deserted. It helped that Nadja Chamak and her daughter Manon had been switched.

The police and ambulance arrived next, attracting more and more onlookers. He spotted Alya among the crowd, filming as two children broke past the police line to jump into the sobbing woman's lap. One of them was carrying a skateboard.

He saw Ladybug hold up his mask and ring, saying something to the cameras, and worried. Would Hawkmoth suspect anything? He heard someone ask where Chat Noir was, but didn't get Ladybug's answer. She looked confident enough giving it, though. Lying to the press had become a necessary skill.

Footsteps and chatter startled him, and he stared in horror as a trio of students appeared, making their way to through the trees. All they'd have to do was look up and his identity would be completely exposed. He ran through potential lies in his head. He should probably just try and pass for a cosplayer. A _wet_ cosplayer. He shivered. They'd laugh and take photos and tell the press and then his father would ground him forever.

The students' attention was on the scene at the fountain, though, and they passed right underneath without seeing him. Adrien breathed a sigh of relief, but he hoped Ladybug would bring him back his mask soon.

Ladybug saw the students coming out of the trees, and with a sharp glance towards Adrien, bugged out of the crowd in the opposite direction. Adrien panicked for a moment, wondering where she was going without him, but then she appeared on the ground below him and yoyo'd her way into the branches.

"Here," she said, passing him the mask. He put it back on quickly, afraid to look at her, but he could feel her scrutinizing him. The silence between them grew longer and longer, and the urge to fill it grew stronger and stronger, until he could no longer bear the tension.

"I guess the cat's out of the bag, huh?"

He clapped his hands over his mouth and looked at her. For a moment she had the strangest expression on her face, like several emotions were jostling for space on her features. Then she burst into helpless giggles.

He giggled too, nervously. The laughter welled up inside them both, bubbling uncontrollably out of them until they clutched their sides, gasping.

"What are we going to do?" Ladybug wheezed, and all he could do was shake his head.

Her expression froze at a noise, and suddenly she was pulling him to her again. This time he just managed to catch the nervous look she threw him and the blush spilling out from under her mask before she pulled him out of the park and onto the rooftops. He clung to her, trembling as the wind snuck into the gaps in his suit, while she looked for a place to land where noone would see them. His stomach knotted with nerves. He was more scared now than while they were fighting the akuma. No miraculous cure would reverse this.

A horrible thought occurred to him as she set him down on a rooftop near his school.

"Please don't keep Plagg!" he blurted out.

Ladybug stared at him wide-eyed. The yoyo she was reining in hit her on the temple and she hissed in pain.

"Sorry," he said as she rubbed the side of her head, pulling her yoyo back more carefully. "I just – I didn't do it on purpose, I promise, and I know you're the Guardian now and you get to choose, but please please _please_ let me still be Chat Noir, I swear I'll never let this happen again, I'll burn the costume and once Plagg's better I'll be really careful so he doesn't get sick again, and I won't try and find out who you are or even _mention_ it ever again, so please..."

Ladybug was staring at him, eyes like blue china saucers, her mouth forming a small "o", and Adrien could feel a lump forming in his throat and heat pricking his eyes but the words kept pouring out and he didn't know how to stop them at this point.

"...I-I can't go back to the way my life was before, my father would – he's – r-really strict – it was hard enough getting him to let me go to school and he keeps reminding me that he could take me out at any time, I have to c-constantly live up to this _brand_ of his, and being Chat Noir is one of the only times I ever get to be _myself_, you know, and P-Plagg's the only company I have at home because my father h-hardly ever lets anyone come over..."

He turned away from her as the tears spilled out, crouching next to the chimney to take his mask off and wipe his eyes. _Stupid, stupid, stupid. _Why did he say all that? None of it held any good, logical reasoning as to why he should be allowed to keep his miraculous. He felt Ladybug crouch down next to him and, hesitating just a little, put her hand on his shoulder. He braced himself for the worst.

"I'm not going to take your miraculous."

Adrien blinked and looked at her, his vision blurry. "What?"

"I'm not taking your miraculous," she repeated. "There's no reason to. Even if I chose someone else, I'd have to know their identity to give it to them, so what's the point?"

Adrien suddenly felt very stupid. Of course, giving the cat miraculous to someone else wouldn't change the fact that she knew who was under the mask. Relief and embarassment flooded his chest. He'd said way too much.

Besides," she continued, "It's my fault. I'm the one who lost the mask while I was still in your body. It must have happened when I got kicked, right before I smashed the skateboard. I didn't even notice that I'd lost it. And even if it _was_ your fault..." She squeezed his shoulder and smiled a lopsided smile that sent the blood rushing to his cheeks. "You're the only Chat Noir I can see myself working with. You're _good_ at it. It doesn't matter who you are under the mask. I trust you. We've been through too much together for me to change partners now."

Adrien tried to smile back, but it probably looked more like a grimace. "T-thanks," he mumbled, pulling his knees to his chest and fighting the urge to bury his head in his hands. She took her hand off this shoulder and sat down next to him, shifting awkwardly, like she didn't know how close she should sit. It felt like a huge wall had sprung up between them, robbing them of their usual easy conversation. Adrien didn't act the way Chat Noir did towards Ladybug, and Ladybug didn't act towards Adrien the same way she did towards Chat Noir, and now neither of them knew how to act with each other.

If this was what _one_ reveal did to them, maybe he didn't want to know who Ladybug was.

"About what you said in the sewer," Ladybug started, looking down at her red-slippered feet. "About why we should know who we are..."

"Forget about it," he said quickly. "Forget I said anything."

"No," she said. "You were right. I-I mean, maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. I need to think about it." She bit her lip, still not looking at him.

"Oh," he said lamely, but his heart picked up speed a little. She was actually considering it.

"It's still a huge risk," she said. "This – " she made a gesture that indicated them both, "- is already huge. If something happens to me, if – if I get akumatized, for example, we'd both go down. Paris would be doomed."

Adrien swallowed hard before he spoke. "I guess maybe it's better I don't know, then," he said, unable to keep the sadness out of his voice. "At least that way, if I'm the one who gets akumatized, they'd still have Ladybug. You could de-evilize me and that'd be it. If it you got akumatized, I don't know what I'd do."

He felt her shudder. "I'd prefer not to have to do that again," she said softly.

He cocked his head and looked at her, wondering what she meant by "again."

"You mean that time Dark Cupid got me? That was Kim, remember? I just caught one of his arrows."

"Oh, yeah, I guess," she said, with an awkward laugh. "Still." She grew quiet again. Maybe she was remembering that she'd had to kiss him to break the spell. His heart twisted. He guessed the boy Ladybug was in love with wasn't Adrien Agreste. He had hoped, but that was definitely too much luck for the black cat to ask for. He put his chin on this knees with a sigh.

She turned to him again. "Hey, so... how did you sneak out like that, since your father's so strict?"

"I didn't," he said, glad to change the subject. "I put the costume in my bag and threw it out the window, and then I snuck out the back. I changed in a public toilet and left the bag under a bush."

"Clever," she smiled at him and he grinned back, but she looked away very quickly. "S-so, um... want me to get you back home?"

"I should definitely change first," he said. "But yes, please, that _would_ save me from being grounded."

"Put more bask- I mean, put your mask back on," Ladybug told him, and he obeyed.

Once the mask was back in place, he stepped up close to her, and there was some fumbling around with arms and hands, as if they'd forgotten how it was done. Adrien bit back a groan of despair. Even when she'd rescued him as Adrien it hadn't been this awkward. Now it was too awkward for him to even enjoy being close to her any more. He was too aware of himself, wondering if he was holding too tightly, wondering how she felt, if she was uncomfortable with him being this close to her now. She certainly seemed distracted, nearly banging into the sides of building and almost dropping him twice. She only spoke to ask him where he'd hidden his clothes, and he hurried getting changed, struggling to peel the wet leather off his skin (he hoped his father wouldn't ask for the costume back, it was definitely ruined), unable to shake off the feeling that she might just freak out and leave him behind.

She didn't. Of course she didn't. Of course she smiled shyly as he walked back towards her in his civilian clothes, although her eyes skittered past his and her voice hitched when she murmured "Hold on" as she pulled him securely against her again. The journey to his house was too short. When she jumped through the open window and landed lightly on his carpet, his hands wouldn't let her go.

"Um," she said.

"Y-yeah," he stuttered, jerking back all at once. They stood awkwardly for a second.

"Well," she said, "guess I should go peel hag – I mean, heal Plagg..."

"Wait!" he had his hand on her arm before he could stop himself. "Um." He had no idea what he wanted to say to her. He just knew that if she left him now, he'd be all alone with all these new thoughts, and noone – not even Plagg – to help him make any sense of them.

But if he wanted Plagg back, he'd have to let her go and heal him.

"Adrien?" There was concern on her face again. He blushed, remembering how he'd cried in front of her not half an hour earlier.

"N-nothing," he said, taking his hand off her arm and holding it behind his back where it couldn't do any more damage. "Just... please take care of Plagg for me."

She smiled sympathetically. "I'll get him back to you as fast as I can, I promise," she said. "It'll be easier now I know where to find you." She raised a hand and, hesitating a little, patted his shoulder again. He could still feel the pressure of it as he watched her sail over wall and out of sight.


	7. Chapter 7

DOUBLE SURPRISE BONUS CHAPTER! In which Sabine gets MAD and Tikki ships the lovesquare. Third chapter I'm publishing today, because it's not every year I'm this productive and I didn't want to break my streak. Now it's nearly midnight and I have a seven-hour drive with a small child tomorrow, so ENJOY THE RESULTS OF MY BAD DECISION I GUESS Warning: season 3 spoilers, including but not limited to Chat Blanc.

If Marinette thought she'd have time to panic about knowing Chat Noir's indentity when she got home, she had another thing coming.

"_Where were you?!_ I was going insane with worry!"

Sabine Cheng rarely raised her voice, but when she did it was terrifying. Marinette cringed, wondering how her mother – who was a head shorter than her – managed to appear so big and scary in that moment. Even her Dad, who had also been angry at first, was beginning to look less stern and more sympathetic.

"Maman I'm sorry!"

"Sorry's not gonna cut it young lady! You were gone for two hours! I thought you were ill?!"

"I am ill, maman!" Marinette wracked her brain as her mother continued to rant, but no excuse came to her. She glanced around, cringing away from such fury, and spotted the news report on the television.

"The akuma," whispered Tikki's voice in her ear.

"There was an akuma attack!" She said, pointing at the TV.

"I know that!" her mother snapped. "Why do you think we were this worried?!"

"Maman, I got shot! I just went up to get some air and she was passing over the house really fast and I got body swapped with a baby!"

Sabine blinked, but then her eyes narrowed. "So how do you explain the fact that we didn't find a baby Marinette upstairs?"

"I guess Ladybug must've put her somewhere safe? It would have been dangerous to leave a baby my size on the balcony. I don't know, I was stuck in a pram for two hours, and when I got switched back I was back up there!" Marinette mentally thanked Tikki for coming up with such a good lie. She let some of the day's nervous exhaustion seep into her voice. For dramatic effect. Not at all because she was barely holding it together. "It was horrible, maman! I didn't know what was going on!" she said.

Sabine glared at her through narrowed eyes for a few more seconds, but then her expression softened. "Why didn't you just say so in the first place?" she grumbled, coming forward to hug her daughter.

"You didn't really give her a chance," Marinette's dad chimed in, smiling ruefully at Marinette.

"Hush, you," Sabine said, but the bark had gone out of her voice. "Let's get you back to bed, sweetpea. I hope that baby didn't put anything in its mouth while it was... you."

"I don't think so, maman, it was probably confused. It's _really_ weird being in someone else's body." That part, at least, was sincere.

Marinette figured that after such a scare, her parents would probably be in to check on her quite regularly, and she was right. Even if she did find out how to heal Plagg, it would have to wait until they were sleeping.

Well, good, because she didn't seem close to figuring it out yet. She was getting the hang of the code, but a lot of the instructions were in metaphors or even riddles, and the practical instructions were hidden amongst pages upon pages of dense theory and parables.

Besides which, she was finding it impossible to concentrate.

_Chat Noir is Adrien. Chat Noir is Adrien. Adrien Agreste is Chat Noir._

_Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god._

"Tikki, help me," she moaned after two hours (and three parental checks). She threw herself back onto her pillow, holding the tablet and stylus to her chest.

"You know I can't read the book of the Guardians, Marinette," Tikki said.

"No, I mean help me get my mind off Chat Noir. I can't concentrate because I keep thinking about him."

Tikki giggled. "Never thought I'd hear you mooning over Chat Noir, Marinette," she teased.

Marinette glared at Tikki. "You knew! You saw him the day we swapped miraculouses!"

"Actually I saw him that time Dark Owl trapped you both in a shipping container full of whipped cream," Tikki said.

"That's even longer!" Marinette moaned. She thought back to that day. To all the other times they'd almost discovered each other, and then hadn't, only for it to happen today because of her stupid mistake.

Part of her wished she could at least blame Chat Noir.

Wait, no she didn't. She couldn't blame _Adrien_ for this.

"I'm so confused, Tikki," she said. "How am I supposed to figure out how to heal Plagg if I can't even concentrate? I told him I'd do it as fast as I could!" She remembered what he'd said about Plagg being his only company when he was at home, and a lump rose in her throat. She'd never seen him that vulnerable, as Adrien or Chat Noir. It had been all she could do not to hug him right then and there, but the sheer awkwardness of it all had stopped her.

She'd probably never be able to talk to him properly again.

"Marinette, put the book aside for a minute," Tikki said in her Common Sense Voice. "I think you need to process this before you can concentrate on anything else."

Marinette sighed. "You're probably right, Tikki. But _how_ do I process something like this? Do I have to go through, like, the stages of grief or what?"

"If you're _that_ disappointed in Adrien, I guess," Tikki said, smiling.

"I was kidding," said Marinette. "Though now I come to think of it, I definitely went through denial back there, so I guess I'm at... anger?"

"I don't think the five stages of grief apply in this situation, Marinette, but if they did, I think you'd still be in denial."

Marinette sighed. Tikki was right. "I'm just... having trouble seeing it, I guess," she said. "Adrien's so sweet and considerate and perfect in real life, it's hard to imagine that he's also..."

"A pushy, hyperactive narcissist with a dad joke addiction?"

"Tikki!"

"What? That's what _you_ said about him last week!"

Marinette pouted. "I was annoyed with him," she said. "Chat Noir's not like that. I mean, he is, but he's not _just_ like that."

"Keep going," Tikki encouraged. "Let's find out what they have in common. What are Chat Noir's other qualities?"

Marinette bit the tip of her stylus, thinking. "He's reliable," she said. "He's always got my back, no matter what. He encourages me when I get down on myself – Adrien does that, too. He's a good listener, and he gives good advice. And we work really well together, as superheroes, anyway. We can read each other, even when the situation's really bad. He trusts me, even when he doesn't understand my plans. The number of times he's protected me..."

"Don't forget that he's sweet and sensitive," Tikki added. "Remember that time he set up a candelit picnic for you two?"

Marinette nodded, and then sat up suddenly, sending her tablet flying on her bed. "Oh my God Tikki _Adrien did that! For me! And I didn't even show up!_"

"Because you were waiting for _him_ to show up," Tikki reminded her.

Marinette felt heat rushing to her cheeks. "Tikki, Chat Noir is in love with Ladybug, and Chat Noir is Adrien, which means Adrien is in love with Ladybug, which means_ Adrien is in love with me!_" She squealed, throwing herself back onto her pillow and kicking her legs in excitement. Then she froze. "Oh my god Tikki I've rejected Adrien so many times!"

"Well, you rejected him _for_ him, so..."

"He probably hates me now!" she wailed.

The trapdoor opened, and Tikki flew out of sight behind a pillow. "Who are you talking to, Marinette?" her mother asked.

"Myself, maman," Marinette said, uncurling from her ball of panic to poke her head over the rail of her bed and hoping her smile didn't look too strained. "Just trying to get some revision done."

Sabine frowned up at her. "You should be resting. You're looking very flushed. Come here."

Marinette climbed halfway down the steps to her bed so Sabine could press a hand to her forehead.

"You're hot. You should be in your pyjamas already. Get changed, I'll bring you some medicine." She disappeared downstairs, and Marinette started changing into her pyjamas.

"Ask her for a cookie!" Tikki hissed at her. Marinette smiled and called down to her mother, asking if she could bring a plate of cookies, too.

"No cookies for sick children," Sabine called back. "I'll bring you some porridge. It's dinner time anyway."

"Sorry Tikki, will rice porridge do?" Marinette asked. Tikki made a face.

"Could you please make it sweet, maman?" Marinette called down.

"Okay, ma chérie."

Sabine soon came back up carrying a tray with a bowl of rice porridge, a glass of water, and a pill on it. "Now back to bed with you, and I don't want to hear you _revising_," she said, smiling as she handed the tray to her daughter. She made sure Marinette was well tucked into bed before kissing her on the forehead and disappearing downstairs. Marinette waited until she heard her footsteps recede before ushering Tikki out from behind her pillow. She held a spoonful of rice porridge up for her to try. Tikki sniffed at it dubiously and took a small bite.

"How is it?" Marinette asked, stifling a giggle at her kwami's expression. Tikki didn't seem to have a nose, but she was scrunching it up anyway.

"It's... not too bad," Tikki said, and Marinette couldn't help but laugh.

"You don't have to pretend, Tikki, I didn't make it."

"Your mother put a lot of love and effort into it, though!"

"She's not here, so it doesn't matter. You don't have to eat it, I was hungry anyway."

"I guess I'll just go get something from the kitchen later," Tikki agreed as Marinette ate the rest of the spoonful. "Let's get back to our discussion. Now you've listed some of Chat Noir's qualities, can do the same for Adrien's faults?"

Marinette frowned, pausing with her spoon halfway to her mouth. "I don't think so," she said. "Isn't that the whole point of having an embarassingly huge crush on someone? He just seems perfect to me." Guilt twisted her heart as she remembered what he'd said about having to be perfect all the time because of his father. "Tikki, maybe the Adrien I thought I was in love with wasn't the real him at all," she said.

"Do you really think he wears a mask all the time? That nothing he says or does are real?"

She shook her head. One of the things she liked about Adrien was that he was honest.

"You change when you're in the suit too, Marinette," Tikki said. "You have no qualms putting Chat Noir in his place when he needs it, and you're much braver, too. I've even seen you flirt _back_ sometimes."

"What, me? With Chat Noir? Pff, what are you even talking about," Marinette said, but her cheeks were pink and she was smiling. She'd flirted with _Adrien_.

"If you say so, Marinette," Tikki said, a little too gleefully.

"Weren't we talking about something else?" Marinette said.

"Adrien's faults," Tikki reminded her. "You've known him for a while now. He's your friend. I'm sure you can think of something."

Marinette swallowed a few more spoonfuls of porridge, trying to think. "All I can think of is that his alterego is a pushy hyperactive narcissist with a dad joke addiction."

Tikki giggled. "That, and he's completely oblivious to your embarassingly huge crush on him."

Marinette's lips drooped in a sad frown. "Or else he's ignoring it on purpose," she said. "I feel like with how I act around him, he should know by now. He's seen me with other people, he knows I only get weird around him." She thought of all her interactions with Chat Noir outside of her Ladybug costume, and sighed. "In fact, he's experienced it himself all those times he's saved me. He definitely knows." She pushed the tray down her bed so she could pull her knees up and bury her face in her arms.

"What if he's been ignoring it because of his crush on Ladybug?" Tikki suggested.

Marinette gripped her bedsheets. "Ohh, Tikki, what if you're right? I bet I've blown it by now! He's been way less flirty recently!"

"Recently as in today, when you had to tell him off for flirting?" Tikki said.

Marinette lifted her head just enough to look at Tikki, hovering at eye level in front of her. If she'd had eyebrows, one of them would have been raised. "You think he still likes me?" she asked in a small voice.

"Of course!" Tikki said. "Remember that day in his car, after the wax museum? He said the girl he liked was always telling him he was bad at jokes. You were so upset, it was _so_ hard not to tell you that day. Because he was talking about you, Marinette! As Ladybug!"

Marinette frowned. "I always thought he was talking about Kagami."

"Do you think Kagami would tell him his jokes were bad?"

Marinette thought about it. "She would if he told her a bad joke," she concluded. "Kagami's really honest. Besides, I'm pretty sure they're dating now." She sighed. "It's probably for the best. Remember Chat Blanc?"

Tikki fell silent. Marinette felt her land on her hand, snuggling up to her cheek. She lifted a finger to stroke Tikki's tiny head, finally allowing herself to hear the whisper that had been niggling at back of her mind ever since she'd realized he was in love with her. _Even if he does still love me, should we even date in the first place?_

"I thought about it earlier," Marinette continued, "when he said it would be better for him to be akumatized than me. I get it now. Adrien didn't tell anyone, he just... we must have started dating, and..."

_It was our love that did this to the world, M'lady._

She saw Chat Blanc in her mind, his eyes closed, one lonely tear rolling down his face, and she connected that image to Adrien. Adrien, who she'd just discovered was even lonelier than she'd thought. Adrien had been akumatized and destroyed Paris. She'd often wondered, how long had he been there, alone in the ruins of what he'd done, waiting for someone to find him? Wondering it about Adrien, knowing what she knew about him, was heartwrenching.

A small sob escaped her, and Tikki nuzzled her even closer, stroking her face with her tiny paws. "I don't know what to do, Tikki," Marinette whispered, her throat tight. "He was right, it would be easier if we both knew, but... what if something bad happens? What if something so bad happens that Bunnix can't come back and help me make it right again?"

"Marinette, that would be... difficult," Tikki said. "Maybe even impossible. The rabbit miraculous is _ridiculously_ powerful. Almost as powerful as me, and I can bring back the dead if they died because of an akuma." She wiped away Marinette's tears, smiling. "I'm pretty sure Chat Blanc was the worst possible scenario. And we're no longer in that timeline, because you fixed it, and this situation is different. Bunnix hasn't turned up yet, so I'm guessing nothing catastrophic will happen."

"Because I haven't decided on anything yet," Marinette said. "I don't want to go on another mission like with Chat Blanc, not tonight. I need to heal Plagg. Besides, what if something bad but _not_ catastrophic happens? It's not like we can rely on Bunnix to correct our every decision." She sighed. "I don't want to get hurt, Tikki, and I don't want Adrien to get hurt either."

Tikki hummed. "Maybe you should hold off on your decision for a while," she suggested.

"What happened to the whole processing thing?" Marinette said, drawing a shaky breath and letting it out slowly.

"You've made good progress with that, haven't you?" Tikki asked. "Can you see the similarities between Chat Noir and Adrien a bit more?"

Marinette wiped her face with her sleeve. "I guess," she said, and surprised herself by giggling. "If he starts making puns, I'll probably get all huffy just on reflex."

"I remember you doing that once with Adrien," Tikki said, smiling.

"I got huffy with Adrien? When?"

"After Darkblade, remember? He said "what a knightmare" and you put your hands on your hips and _scowled_ at him. You both looked so much like Ladybug and Chat Noir right then, I had to stop myself from laughing."

"I don't remember that!"

Tikki laughed. "Well, let's hope he goes back to making puns next time so you two can get back to normal. It was _awkward_ back there."

"Tell me about it," Marinette groaned.

"Think you can concentrate on the book again now?"

She smiled. "I guess so." She cupped her kwami in her hand and kissed the black spot on her forehead. "Thanks, Tikki."

"Any time, Marinette."


	8. Chapter 8

**HAPPY HOLIDAYS! At some point I'm going to have to change the title of this fic because really Plagg getting ill is just a catalyst for everything that happens next, and I feel like for a titular character, he's not getting nearly enough dialogue.**

"Hey dude, are you okay?"

Adrien was climbing the steps towards the school gates when Nino slung an arm around his shoulders, frowning in concern. Adrien hadn't slept, and it showed.

"Hi guys. I think I caught a cold," he said, which was true. After the previous day's adventures in the fountain, he really should have taken a hot bath, but he'd been too distracted. Instead he'd collapsed on his bed without even bothering to take off his shoes and stared at the ceiling for several hours, replaying the entire conversation with Ladybug and analyzing it from every angle. He had drawn two conclusions: the first was that he was a pathetic loser and Ladybug now knew this without a shadow of a doubt and would never, ever consider dating him, and the second was that he really, _really_ missed Plagg and had no idea how he'd ever slept at home without him.

"Maybe you should go back home," said Alya, peering at Adrien from Nino's other side.

"No!" Adrien said a bit too loudly. A few people turned to look at him, and he laughed nervously. "It's fine guys, I'd rather stay here."

Nino chuckled. "Bro, calm down, we're not gonna _make_ you go."

"Hey, did you guys hear about The Hole?" Something in the way Alya said it made them certain that it was "The Hole," and not just "the hole". She was already dragging Nino towards the hole Plagg had made, which had been cordoned off using two school chairs and some duct tape. A piece of paper stuck to the tape read:

"CORROSIVE HOLE. DO NOT TOUCH."

And another, taped to the first, read:

"THE SCHOOL WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU IGNORING THESE SIGNS!"

Kim, Alix, Max and Markov were already there.

"I dare you to touch it," Kim was saying.

"Hahahahaha nope," Alix retorted. "Nuh-uh, I'm not insane."

"'Not insane' is just another word for scaredy cat! I'll touch it, watch."

"I wouldn't, if I were you," Max intervened. "You'd probably lose a finger."

"Or your entire hand," added Markov, who was floating just above the tops of the chairs, one long probe reaching down from his body towards the top of the hole. "The Hole still contains traces of the substance that created it, and according to my calculations, there is a sixty-two percent chance that your hand would be gone before you pulled it back by reflex."

Kim paused. "What are the chances I'd lose a finger?"

"Ninety-seven percent."

"Do we know what that substance is?" asked Alya, who was already taking photos.

"Negative," said Markov. "My analysis was inconclusive."

"That's the interesting part," Max said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "Markov has access to the molecular compositions of all the chemical substances known to humanity – except the classified ones, of course. We can only conclude that this substance is either classified, or undiscovered."

"Or magical!" Alya's excitement was palpable. "Maybe it was made by an akuma!"

"Yeah, dude, maybe we'll be sent home before school even starts," Nino said hopefully.

"That won't be happening," said a stern voice behind them. "This hole was discovered before yesterday's akuma attack, and it appears to be the only one of its kind in Paris, according to the police. There is no reason to believe there's an akuma involved, and as such you are all required in class as of _now_."

The students groaned as M. Damocles shoo'd them away from The Hole. Adrien breathed a sigh of relief, surreptitiously wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

"Dude, are you sure you don't need to go home? You look like you've got a fever."

"I'm fine, really," Adrien assured his friend.

Homeroom was over and they'd already moved to the science lab by the time Marinette skidded into class with a brioche in her mouth, holding one half of her hair as she tried to tie it into a pigtail and rush to her seat at the same time.

Adrien clapped a hand to his head. _Marinette's notes!_ He'd completely forgotten!

"Arriving fashionably late requires fashion sense, Dupain-Cheng!" Chloe called. Marinette pretended to ignore her, but the flush in her cheeks deepened.

Mme Mendeliev cleared her throat. "I suppose you must be late from catching up on the lesson you missed yesterday, Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng?"

Marinette froze.

"Mmf-" she said over the brioche.

"It's my fault, Madame Mendeliev," Adrien said, standing. "I promised I'd bring her yesterday's notes and I forgot."

"Then you won't mind spending your morning break getting her up to speed," said Mme Mendeliev.

Marinette let out a breath and shot a grateful look to Adrien, who whispered "sorry!" to her as she slid onto the bench behind him.

Their science teacher was in an uncharacteristically good mood, and they found out why when she suggested a question-and-answer session on the subject The Hole. Adrien couldn't help but tense up every time somebody raised their hand, but nobody made the connection between the corrosive effects of the substance in the hole and Chat Noir's cataclysm, and Mme Mendeliev brushed aside Alya's akuma theory just as their principal had. She was convinced it was the result of some chemical reaction, possibly produced accidentally by an unknown prodigy in one of her classes, and she assured them that whoever had created The Hole would _not_ be in trouble if they came forward, as long as they could reproduce the chemical reaction in a controlled laboratory setting.

Still, Adrien was relieved when Mme Mendeliev put an end to the questions in favour of some actual chemistry. He wondered if he should come forward as Chat Noir and tell the school he'd cataclysmed a bit of pavement by accident during a fight. He could probably afford to pay for the damages. But then, how would he explain that the miraculous ladybugs hadn't repaired it? Maybe he should ask Ladybug first.

He sighed. It was a moot point anyway until he got Plagg back.

Morning break came, and Adrien got up to sit in Alya's place next to Marinette, waving to Alya and Nino as they filed out with the rest of the class. Alya winked encouragingly at Marinette, and Marinette ducked her head, pink-cheeked. Adrien hoped Marinette wasn't too behind because of him. She always seemed so busy.

"I'm really sorry about yesterday," he said. "You didn't miss much because of the akuma alert, but I shouldn't have forgotten to bring you your notes."

"I-it's fine!" Marinette replied, a little too brightly. "It's nice of you to help me now, anyway." She wasn't looking at him, and his heart sank. She was definitely upset.

"It's not fine," he said sadly. "You have to miss morning break because of me. I get it if you're angry."

Marinette turned to him, looking panicked and waving her hands quickly in denial. "No no no! I'm not angry! I'm just-!" She glanced around the room. "I'm worried! About, you know..." she cupped her hand next to her mouth and whispered, "The Hole."

"Oh," said Adrien, laughing nervously. "Yeah, me too. D'you think Chat Noir will be mad at us?"

Marinette blinked at him twice, and he thought he saw her suppress a smile. "Um. No, I think it'll be fine," she said. "I mean, he trusted you with his miraculous even though you're a civilian." He could have sworn she was side-eyeing him as she added, "He really should have brought it to Ladybug himself."

"But he doesn't know who she is!" said Adrien, exasperated.

"That's true," said Marinette, looking away, and he suddenly felt bad for taking it out on her. _Good job, Agreste_, he thought, mentally kicking himself.

"A-anyway, about those notes..."

"Of course, sorry," Adrien said, pulling out yesterday's notes to give to her. She began to copy them out in her neat cursive.

"Um," said Adrien, lowering his voice and leaning towards her, though the class was deserted. "Have you... had any news? From Ladybug, I mean."

Marinette's pen paused mid-sentence. "N-no," she said. "I haven't seen her since I gave the ring to her yesterday. Why, are you worried?"

"A little bit," he said. "Yesterday there was an akuma attack. They said Chat Noir was there, but..."

"Then maybe she already gave him his miraculous back."

"Without going through one of us?"

"Maybe she figured out who he was."

Adrien swallowed. Surely Marinette had no idea how close to the truth she was.

"I dunno," he said slowly, wondering if what he was about to say was too risky. He said it anyway: "Nobody caught him on camera or anything. Maybe he put on a costume or something just so Hawkmoth wouldn't notice, and ran off before anybody could get a closer look."

Marinette's lips definitely twitched. "You're right, and he's usually such a show off," she said, bending her head over the paper. He could have sworn there was a teasing note in her voice.

Adrien never could resist a challenge.

"Hey, Chat Noir's cool, he should be allowed to show off," he said.

She glanced up at him and this time there was no mistaking the twinkle in her eye. "Didn't you say he wasn't as awesome as Ladybug yesterday?"

"Did I say that?"

"Yep, you did."

"Well I guess I meant that Ladybug's amazing because she's makes all the plans, but come on, in terms of who's the coolest, it's gotta be Chat Noir."

"I dunno, I think Ladybug's cooler." Marinette was _smirking, _an expression she'd only ever directed at him when he _was_ Chat Noir. It had always made him feel slightly jealous of his superhero self, because he felt like she was never quite herself when he was being Adrien. Probably due to him being the son of her favourite designer. Marinette relaxing around him was definitely something he wanted to encourage.

He smirked back. "You only think that because your best friend writes the ladyblog. Ladybug's amazing, but I don't think she's _cooler_ than Chat Noir."

"Really?" Her eyebrows rose, disappearing under her fringe.

"Well yeah, I mean, didn't he save you that one time with Evillustrator?"

"True, but what about all those puns he's always throwing around? He sounds like my dad sometimes!"

Adrien gasped indignantly, and had to remind himself that Marinette did _not_ know she was talking to Chat Noir in person. "Puns are funny! You could say he's _punny_." He winked.

Marinette burst out laughing. "Oh no, it's contagious!" she giggled, and something about her laugh quickened his heart. Sometimes Marinette _really_ looked like Ladybug. If he hadn't seen them both together that time she'd given back the mouse miraculous, he'd be having serious doubts, especially after this conversation.

_It's a pity she's not,_ he found himself thinking as she let out one last giggle and turned back to her work with a smile. Then he shut out that thought before he could analyze what it meant.

After a moment he said, "I don't know if I should be asking this, but... are you and Labybug related?"

"W-what?! Nooo, why would you think that?" Marinette said, looking panicky again. Adrien chuckled, and her shoulders slumped. "You _shouldn't_ be asking that," she pouted. "Ladybug's and Chat Noir's identities have to be kept secret no matter what, otherwise what's to stop Hawkmoth going after their families?"

Adrien stopped smiling, sobered by the thought of Hawkmoth targeting Marinette. "I'm sorry, you're right. I promise I won't tell."

"Tell what? I didn't say anything." She gave him a Look.

"Right," he said, swallowing. "Sorry."

She smiled at him lopsidedly, letting him know he was forgiven (and _damn_ she looked so much like Ladybug today! They were definitely cousins or something). When she turned back to her work again, he watched her hand as it quickly traced letters that could have won a calligraphy contest. It was mesmerizing, like watching someone else's hands as they played the piano or painted a picture. He'd always found it relaxing to watch people do things they were good at.

Relaxing made him more aware of how cold he was. He shivered, and sneezed.

"Bless you."

"Thanks," he said. "Um, you wouldn't have a tissue by any chance?" He'd forgotten to bring his own in his distraction that morning.

"Sure, here." She fished a packet out of her handbag, handing it to him. She frowned. "Actually, are you okay? You do look a bit pale."

"Just a-," he started, but then she gently pushed his hair out of the way to put her hand on his forehead, and it was such a maternal gesture that his breath hitched and the rest of the sentence got stuck in his throat.

"You're hot," she said. Then her eyes met his. He didn't know what she saw in them, but it made her she pull her hand away as though he'd burned it. "I-I-mean not! Hot not! I mean, not hot! I mean – you _are_ hot, but I didn't mean it in that way, not that you're not hot in that way – um – ohmygodshutupme -"

Adrien laughed. Flustered Marinette was cute, too.

"What I meant," Marinette finished with an embarassed smile, "was that I think you have a fever."

"Please don't say I should go home," Adrien groaned. "Alya and Nino already did, but believe me, I'd much rather be here." He smiled at her, and her eyes widened a little before she turned away, blood rushing to her cheeks.

"O-okay," she said, hunching over her work again. "But you should take care of yourself all the same. Get somebody to make you porridge or soup when you do get home, okay?"

Adrien had to stop himself from hugging her in the wave of warmth and affection that submerged him right then. Nino and Alya being worried about him was one thing, but Marinette somehow managed to take it to a whole other adorable level. He wasn't sure how she'd feel about him hugging her, though, and besides, she was busy writing.

He didn't have time to find out.

There was a loud BOOM, followed by screaming, and a now-familiar cry sounded in the corridor, spurring them into immediate and well-practised evacuation:

"AKUMA ALERT!"


	9. Chapter 9

**Updates are back, but may be slower than before. My nan died on christmas day and I'm still processing. Thanks as always for all your lovely comments and the title suggestions I've received; the title I'm going with, as suggested by Berry_Bear on AO3, is Feline Green. I do love a good pun.**

**TW: claustrophobia**

Marinette had barely stepped out of the science lab when she felt herself being yanked down by the wrist. Adrien wrapped his arm protectively around her shoulders, glaring at the space where she'd been standing. She glanced back to see a large pink pause sign floating in the air where she'd stood.

_Lady Wifi again?!_

"This way!" Adrien pulled Marinette to her feet and set off at a low run towards the emergency exit, gripping her hand tightly.

"Marinette!" Lady Wifi's voice echoed from the courtyard below. "My bff! My best friend in the whole _world_-" a series of pauses hit all the classroom doors in front of them and they skidded to a halt. "Why didn't you back me up in class, huh?"

Adrien spun and ran in the opposite direction, pulling Marinette along with him. She stumbled, trying to keep up.

"Aw, how sweet!" A camera symbol appeared in the air above the courtyard, pointing at them both. "Look at Adrien, trying to be a hero! I kinda get your crush on him, Marinette. Such a gentleman!"

Marinette couldn't help the reflex that made her jerk her hand away from Adrien's. She avoided his surprised glance and turned to her akumatized friend down in the courtyard.

"Alya, why are you doing this?"

"Alya's logged off, Marinette, you're talking to Lady Wifi!" Lady Wifi bowed, smirking. "Too bad you didn't have her back when she needed you!"

"What are you even talking about?!"

"The Hole, Dumbinette! It obviously has something to do with an akuma or the miraculouses! And I'm gonna prove it as soon as Ladybug and Chat Noir turn up to save you!" Another pink symbol came flying at Marinette and she ducked behind the railing.

An akuma – or the miraculouses. Alya was getting closer to the truth, and Hawkmoth with her.

Adrien scampered towards her on all fours, looking so much like Chat Noir that she could almost see the black mask and ears. "You need to hide, Marinette!" he panted, but before he could help her up, her handbag buzzed.

Marinette let out a frightened yelp as she whipped out her phone and skidded it down the floor of the corridor. Without stopping to see where it had landed, she scrabbled to her feet, grabbed Adrien by the sleeve of his shirt and ran. They rounded the corner near the science lab again, but Marinette tripped, and they crashed to the ground in a tangle of bruised limbs. All the doors on this side had been blocked, too. All except one, right at the end.

"Your phone!" Marinette gasped, struggling back to her feet. Adrien pulled his phone out of his pocket and lobbed it over the railing just as it started to buzz. They set off at a crouching run towards the one door that wasn't locked.

Laughter echoed from across the courtyard, getting closer and closer. Lady Wifi rounded the corner as Marinette reached the door, yanked it open, pushed Adrien inside and dived in after him, slamming it shut. A pink glow appeared around the door, indicating that they'd just made it.

Or not.

"Caught you!" Alya's voice called gleefully from the other side of the door. "You can thank me later, Marinette. Have fun in the closet you two! I've got a bug and a kitty to catch."

Marinette knew there was no point jiggling the door handle. She knew banging on the door would do nothing but hurt her fists, but she did it anyway. This was a disaster! Lady Wifi was terrorizing Paris hoping to bring Ladybug and Chat Noir out of hiding, not knowing she'd trapped them both in the janitor's closet. And she couldn't turn into Ladybug without revealing who she was to Adrien. Which was a decision she wasn't ready to make yet. But apparently fate had made that decision for her.

Fate or bad luck... or her own damn idiocy.

She should have stayed in the lab when he'd left it.

She should have suggested they split up.

She kicked the door, and immediately regretted it. Ballerina pumps were not kicking shoes.

"Ow ow ow ow ow!" she whimpered, hopping up and down and squeezing her toes, and of course it was impossible to keep her balance in the limited space, so of course she fell into Adrien again.

His arms closed around her like a vice and she froze, her ear against his chest. His breath was ragged and his heart beating fast from their race towards the door, but the way his hands gripped her jacket told her he wasn't just out of breath.

_Adrien doesn't like closed spaces._

And she'd just pushed him into the corner of the closet like an idiot.

"Sorry," she muttered, letting go of her still-throbbing foot and trying to find a spot for it on the floor, kicking aside buckets and bottles of cleaning product and making even more of a mess. When she finally got her footing, she braced her hands against the wall on either side of Adrien's body and pushed herself backwards. He released his grip jerkily, banging his elbows on the walls.

"S-sorry," he stammered.

"I-it's fine," she replied with the same eloquence. "Um. Are you okay? You look..."

"Idon'tlikesmallspaces," he blurted out.

"Right," she said. "I'm sorry, I should've..."

He let out a little laugh, his voice unusually high. "What are you sorry about? You saved us, Marinette. Not like you knew it was a closet."

Even when he was panicking, he was considerate of her.

"Well, I'm sorry I pushed you against the wall," she said. "Um, I think I read that people with claustrophobia feel better if they can't see or feel the walls, so maybe you should be in the middle here." She reached for his hand and tugged gently, sliding her feet backwards and sending various large objects clattering to the floor in an attempt to make room for him in the middle of the closet. He followed until her head bounced painfully off a shelf behind her.

"Owww!"

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she whimpered, her eyes watering as she rubbed the back of her head. "This happens to me, like, three times a week, I'm used to it." He still looked concerned, so she smiled, albeit somewhat painfully. "Are _you_ okay?"

He glanced around and swallowed. "Um, better," he said unconvincingly. "But, uh. Can I...?" He mimed hugging her. They were too close not to, really. "Just, so we're not banging into things," he clarified.

"Oh! Sure!" she said, trying not to sound too delighted. "You can hug me all you want – I mean, if you want!"

He folded his arms around her shoulders, more gently this time. After a second's hesitation (what were hands for? What did one do with them during a hug?), she slipped them around his middle and settled them on his back. She shifted a little, making sure he wasn't touching any walls or shelves, trying to focus on making him feel better. He smelled different to when they'd switched bodies – or maybe her nose just perceived it differently. For a start, there was no cheese smell whatsoever. She guessed that he probably hadn't brought any, since Plagg was still out of action. Also, the half-familiar scent of laundry detergent and shower gel was doing strange things to her brain. She wondered if he'd notice if she buried her nose in his shirt and sniffed him. That would be weird, right?

_Don't get excited, you're doing this because it's necessary. You need to calm him down._

"Maybe you should close your eyes as well," she said. "That way you can't see the walls."

In the quiet that followed she felt his breathing slow and his heart rate return to normal, but the more she tried to think of what to do next, the more acutely aware she became of his cheek against her hair and the warmth of his body under her hands and the way he was cupping the back of her head gently, protecting the place where she'd banged it. Her skin began to tingle pleasantly wherever it touched him.

_Come on, girl, concentrate. Make him think of anything but being shut up in a closet._

"This is a bit like that time we danced at Chloe's party," she said.

"Oh, good idea! I'll think of that," said Adrien, and his hands slipped down until he was circling her waist, pressing her closer to him. He dipped his head a little lower, swaying ever so slightly to remembered music, and the tingles in her skin turned to tendrils of heat, uncurling slowly, delicately.

_OH MY GOD FOCUS!_

"Marinette?" His voice was quiet, right next to her ear.

"Yes?"

"About what Alya said... about you having a crush on me. Is it true?"

Marinette froze, stopping their dance. She opened her mouth to blurt out her usual excuses, but her throat closed around them and no sound came out. The silence stretched on and on, like a taught string.

"Marinette?" he squeezed her gently, as though willing her to respond.

_If I tell him it's not true, he'll believe it even when he sees me as Ladybug_, she thought.

"I..."

An image flashed in her mind. A white masked face, blue slitted eyes closing. A single tear.

Her throat closed again.

Adrien pulled back just enough to look her in the eye, or try to.

"Because if it is true..."

Her heart beat painfully hard in her chest, like a bird trying to escape. He was so close. If she lifted her face to look back at him, she could probably kiss him.

He might even kiss her back.

_Or he might be trying to let you down gently right now because he's in love with Ladybug!_

He raised one hand to cup her cheek, tilting her face to look at him, and his eyes told her everything she needed to know.

"If it's true, but you're afraid to say it, then... um, I..."

"Please don't!" The words felt like knives in her throat, and she squeezed her eyes shut to keep her resolution firm. "Please, I'm sorry, but I need to tell you something else first."

He cocked his head a little. His hair tickled where it moved against her fringe. "What is it, Marinette?"

She pulled away, out of their hug, catching his hands in hers as they fell away and squeezing them. He squeezed back. She took a deep breath, and then another. When the words wouldn't come out on her third try, she reached into her handbag, and nudged Tikki with trembling fingers. The kwami flew into her cupped hand and she raised it slowly, barely daring to look up at him from underneath her fringe.

There was a long, long pause.

"T-Tikki?!" he finally managed in a strangled voice. His mouth hung open in shock and his eyes were like saucers.

"Hello Adrien," Tikki said, smiling awkwardly. She looked as though she would've rather stayed in the bag.

Adrien's eyes flicked from Tikki to Marinette and back again a few times before settling on Marinette. "But... I _saw_ you... that day you used the mouse miraculous..."

"That was an illusion she created using the fox miraculous," Tikki explained, with a note of pride in her voice. Marinette shot her a grateful glance. She wasn't sure if her mouth would form words yet.

Adrien was staring at her, his eyes moving over her hair, her mouth, her cheeks, her chin, before locking on her eyes again. He let out a short, breathless laugh.

"Of course you did," he said, the corners of his lips rising in an astonished smile. "Of _course_ you did. You always were one step ahead of everyone else." He laughed, shaking his head slightly. "I was so close to figuring it out that time, too!" He raised one hand as though wanting to touch her hair and face, to check if she was real, but it only hovered there for a second before he let it drop again. He seemed to realize then that she still hadn't spoken, and concern replaced the wonder in his eyes. "Marinette? What's wrong?"

Marinette looked down, and when she spoke, her voice was a small, trembling thing. "It's all my fault, Adrien. We're not supposed to know each others' identities. This is the second time I've messed up in less than twenty-four hours, and I'm supposed to be the Guardian!"

His hands found her shoulders and squeezed them gently. "Didn't you just choose to tell me this time?"

"No! I never would have had to if we hadn't gotten stuck in the closet together!"

"Oh," he said, his hands dropping to his sides. There was no mistaking the disappointment in his voice.

"I mean, I might have decided to tell you," she said, sniffing. "But I wanted to think about it more. I wanted it to be a logical decision, but instead..."

Adrien stiffened. "Wait. If Ladybug and Chat Noir are both in here..."

"Exactly!" she wailed. "I'm so s-stupid!"

Adrien's hands found her shoulders again. "Look, for what it's worth, I'm _really happy_ to know it's you," he said. "And I'm sure you'll be able to get us out of here somehow with your Lucky Charm."

She sniffed again and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "Actually," she said, "we won't be needing my Lucky Charm for that." She managed a small smile as she looked up at him.

"...We?"

"I haven't managed to heal Plagg yet," she said quickly. "But I _did_ bring three other miraculouses..."

"_Three?_"

She reached into her bag again, fishing out two miraculous boxes. Adrien's eyes widened in excitement as she held them out to him. He didn't take them, though.

"Say the thing," he said gleefully.

"What?"

"The thing, when you give someone a miraculous. Say it! Please?" He put his hands together, pleading. How had she ever doubted that Adrien was Chat Noir? Marinette rolled her eyes, smiling.

"Adrien Agreste," she said, "these are the miraculouses of the snake and the horse, which grant the powers of teleportation and second chance. You will use them for the greater good. Once the job is complete, you will return the miraculouses to me. Can I trust you, Adrien?"

"HELL YEAH!"


	10. Chapter 10

**As always, thanks for your encouraging comments, and also thanks for the condolences I received last time.**

**This chapter was HARD. Hard to motivate myself to do, and hard to work through. Honestly, writing akuma battles - especially working in Lucky Charms - has been one of the most difficult writing exercises I've had to do. And it's not over yet.**

**Enjoy!**

Lady Wifi was mad. She was _livid_.

It was bad enough nobody believed her when she said The Hole was caused by an akuma. She'd expected that of Madame Mendeliev, for whom everything had to have a scientific explaination – despite the fact that they'd been all living in a city where anyone could be akumatized by an actual supervillain using powers derived from magical jewellery for the past year. Madame Mendeliev wasn't the best listener among the teachers, either.

She'd expected the forensic scientists she'd seen poking around during morning break to take her more seriously. And even if they hadn't, that curly blond dude with the nasally voice could have been a lot more _polite_ about it.

"Let the grown-ups do their jobs, _poupée_," he'd sneered. "We don't have time to listen to your fairy tales."

Then she'd heard Kim, Chloe and Sabrina sniggering behind her.

Kim was lucky Nino got to him before she did and elbowed him in the stomach to shut him up, but that was all Nino – or any of her friends – had done to back her up, and that had hurt more than anything.

Even Marinette had been too busy cozying up to Adrien, despite tearfully telling Alya and their friends that she was giving up on him just weeks prior. Over the past year, Alya had had to stop herself countless times from just telling Adrien about Marinette's crush on him, or shutting them up in a closet somewhere until they'd worked it out between themselves.

Lady Wifi had derived _immense_ satisfaction doing both, but now it was time to get down to business.

The deal, as usual, was to get the miraculouses in exchange for superpowers and the convenient disappearance of her conscience. Alya couldn't remember anything from the times she'd been akumatized, but Lady Wifi remembered being Lady Wifi before, and she knew how to draw the superheroes out. All it took was to wreak as much havoc as possible, leaving a nice visible trail of destruction in her wake. So far on her list of paused things and people were traffic lights, pedestrians in the middle of crossing the road, three busses (but not the people in them), parents (but not their children), and a bench of students all with sandwiches halfway to their mouths. She'd been particularly cruel this time, too, being careful to only pause their legs or hands, so they could see and scream but not move, and she'd filmed their terror and frustration for all of Paris to witness.

And yet the bug and the cat hadn't come.

Lady Wifi ground her teeth.

"WHERE ARE YOU?" She roared into the floating pink camera symbol she'd flung into the air above her. She was hovering over the roof of the police station, where she'd trapped all the forensics people – she assumed that's what the ones in labcoats were – by trapping their hands on the wall above their heads (she could hear them whimpering about their poor numb arms already, bunch of wusses), and she'd shut the rest of the staff in the interrogation room with what she'd gathered was a murder suspect for company. The murder suspect looked terrified, much to her disappointment.

The pink outline of Hawkmoth's akuma mask appeared in her peripheral vision as his voice whispered in her head, sounding almost like her own mind. "They're not taking you seriously either, just like those scientists," he said. "Time for more something more dramatic!"

Lady Wifi snickered. "I _live_ for drama!" she cried, and she swooped back into the police station to find a victim – no, several victims. Ladybug and Chat Noir would regret this.

The superheroes teleported just outside the school and found the city of Paris in a state of chaotic standstill.

"Wow," said Chevaspik – the name Adrien had come up with for his fusion. He surveyed the damage, eyes wide.

"She's left a clear path for us," said Foxbug next to him. "Smells like a trap to me. You'd better divide from Kaalki now so you can unify again for later."

Chevaspik nodded. "Sass, Kaalki, divide," he said. The horse kwaami sniffed the cookie Foxbug produced from inside her yoyo and accepted it with a sniff.

"Good thing today's cookies were oatmeal," said Foxbug. She seemed to be side-eyeing him.

"What?" he asked.

"Just remembering the last time I saw you as Aspik," she said, her voice carefully neutral.

Adrien felt the blood leave his face. "Um," he said. "Can we talk about that later? _After_ we've beaten the akuma?"

Foxbug shook her head, apparently to clear it. "You're right," she said. "We're late enough as it is. Who knows what Lady Wifi's up to now?"

In answer to her question, a giant rectangle with Lady Wifi's face in it zapped into view in the sky above them, accompanied by maniacal laughter.

"Ladies and gentlemen of Paris! Your heroes have deserted you!" she crowed. "The brave and powerful Ladybug and Chat Noir would normally be here by now, but they haven't shown up! Are they cowering in fear somewhere? That doesn't sound like them! The heroes of Paris always show up to save the day! Unless..." Lady Wifi paused for dramatic effect. "...I got them already!"

Gasps could be heard in the background. Lady Wifi wasn't alone. "One way to find out!" she continued. "All I have to do is go back and take the rings and earrings off everyone I've paused. We'll find out soon enough! But first, one final test." The camera swung downwards, and the superhero pair gasped as several people came into view, paused in mid-fall from the roof of a building, their bodies and faces contorted with panic. Several others were paused on the roof behind her – partially, so they could still witness what was going on. "Last chance, Ladybug and Chat Noir!" Lady Wifi's voice boomed out. "In ten minutes, they're going down, whether you show up or not! And if you don't, I'll know where you are ~" her message ended on a sing-song note, and Aspik shivered as the massive screen blinked out of existence, leaving only grey clouds.

"The _commissariat_," Foxbug muttered urgently, her yoyo already in hand.

"Hey, wait, Kaalki hasn't finished -"

"There's no time!"

And she was gone already, swinging across the rooftops and out of sight.

"Sorry Kaalki, but this is urgent," Aspik said, and the horse kwami rolled her eyes and took one last bite out of the cookie she'd been nibbling on.

"Sass, Kaalki, unify!"

By the time he caught up with her, Foxbug was perched on a balcony around the corner from the police station, counting under her breath. LadyWifi was nowhere to be seen.

"Fourteen people falling off the roof," Foxbug groaned. "How are we going to save all of them?"

"We have as many chances as you want to succeed," Chevaspik reassured her, and immediately regretted it when she glared at him.

"I do _not_ want you spending months on a mission again," she growled. "If we don't succeed in the first hour, you tell me and we'll figure something else out."

"Like what? She said ten minutes, and it's been six minutes already!"

"Better activate that second chance then," she said. "No, wait – first I'll activate my lucky charm."

She did so as quietly as possible. A parachute fell into her hands, and he activated second chance.

"Let's use these first minutes to plan, then you can go back and tell me," she said quickly. "That roof has two sides to fall off of, and Lady Wifi has people falling from both of them. She's also spaced them out far enough that it'll be difficult to catch all of them before they fall, even if we do manage to grab more than one or two people at a time."

"You only have one parachute," Chevaspik pointed out. "And the roof is too low for it to really work."

Foxbug worried her lower lip as she studied the parachute. "I don't think I'm supposed to use it as a parachute," she said. She glanced around with that determined, calculating look on her face, the one he knew so well from so many other lucky charms, so many other akumas. Every time she made that face he fell more in love with her.

"Do you think you can teleport everybody on that side of the roof to just above the ground without them getting hurt?" she asked, pointing to the side with the most people falling off it.

"I don't know, it's hard to be precise. Max got the train stuck in Big Ben the first time he used it, and I doubt I'd do any better."

"You did fine getting us out of the closet, and you'll have more than one chance to practise," she said. "If it doesn't work, tell me and we'll come up with something else."

"How are we going to deactivate the Wifi without my cataclysm?"

"I got you out of the freezer using a microwave," she said thoughtfully. "We don't need to deactivate it necessarily, just distrupt it."

"...Like, with a magnet?"

"We don't have one," she was getting restless, fiddling with the ends of her pigtails. "Or!" Her face lit up as she looked at him, smiling. "You could put a teleportation hole _around_ the wifi thingy!"

"...What about the people on my side of the building?"

"I'll try to get all of them. If I don't manage, bring us back. Actually go back now and explain the plan to me, before she drops them all."

"Second chance!" he said, and found himself in a slightly different position next to a slightly different Foxbug.

"Let's..."

"Plan, we did that already," he said quickly. "I teleport the wifi tower, you try to catch them all."

A look of surprise came over her face, but she nodded, and he leapt straight for the wifi tower.

"Oh look, it's..." Lady Wifi appeared above him on top of the tower, lit from above by a glowing camera symbol. "Wait, who are you?"

"VOYAGE!" Chevaspik cried, aiming around the tower. It disappeared in a circle of blue light, and Lady Wifi with it, but the falling victims remained hanging in the air.

"It's not working!" he cried.

"Try again, put her farther away!" Foxbug shouted back, and he nodded.

"Second chance!"

The second time he teleported her to the top of Big Ben, but it still didn't work.

"It doesn't matter where she is as long as she has Wifi!" he shouted. "We have to get her away from the tower!"

"I'll distract her," Foxbug said.

That didn't work either, and neither did him chasing after Lady Wifi and then circling back.

After half a dozen or so second chances, he said "Teleporting the Wifi tower doesn't work. We need a better plan." His heart was beating frantically in his chest, from more than just the fight. This felt horribly like the last time he'd been Aspik. Every single one of those 25,913 second chances was burned into his memory. He still had nightmares about them.

It must have shown on his face, because she squeezed his arm. "Hey, it'll be okay," she said. "We'll work something out, I promise." She frowned. "How many times has it been?"

"Six or seven," he said unhappily.

"Let me know when this is getting too much for you," she said. "If you need to go back and just rest for five minutes, that's okay too."

He'd done that the last time, of course. Told her he needed to rest and he'd go back again afterwards. She'd yelled at him the first time, after he'd told her how long he'd been trying for. He'd lied after that.

"C-can I rest now?" he asked, trying not to let his voice crack.

She put her arms around him in response, and he melted into the hug.

"Has it really only been seven times?" she asked.

"I swear," he said into her hair. "It's just... that time with Desperada..."

She squeezed him tighter, one hand reaching under the ponytail that now graced the back of his neck to gently scratch his scalp, and he was glad the fusion with Kaalki had freed his hair from Sass' hood.

"Why did you keep trying for so long when you could have just come back as Chat Noir?"

"You said you needed Adrien, not Chat Noir," he mumbled. "I just... you seemed to like Adrien more. I thought I could... make it work."

He felt her body tense up. "...I said that?" she whispered.

He nodded.

"I'm so sorry, Chat Noir," she said, squeezing him even tighter, and it felt _so good_ to hear her call him that, even though he wasn't Chat Noir at that moment. "I was stupid. God, I was _so_ stupid that day!"

"You didn't know we were the same person," he said.

"No, but I should have known better than to think I could beat Desperada without my partner. Even with Adrien on my side." She rubbed large circles on his back. "I promise, as soon as we fix this, I'll go straight home and find a way to heal Plagg."

"You haven't figured it out yet?"

She let out an exasperated sigh. "There's a manual, and it's in code, and I'm still learning how to decode it. It's hard."

"Could I help?"

There was a pause. "Maybe," she said. "Ask me again when we're done with Lady Wifi. I'll have forgotten with all the second chances." She let out another sigh, small and sad this time.

"What is it?" he asked.

She hesitated, then said, "I won't remember this." Her fingers curled gently against his back and scalp, indicating their hug. "You will, but I won't."

Butterflies stirred in his stomach, and he checked the snake on his wrist. Less than one minute left.

He pulled away just enough to kiss her cheek, right where skin met mask, and grinned wickedly as it blushed red, her eyes widening. "Do you mind if I make the most of that before my time's up?" he murmured, unable to stop himself from channelling Chat Noir.

The blush spread all the way to her ears, and his heart raced. She'd never reacted like _that_ to Chat Noir.

"Mhm!" she squeaked.

He leaned in close again, slowly, giving her time to pull away if she wanted. Her fringe tickled his forehead, and he saw her pupils dilate in a yearning sweetness more intense than any he'd seen before. When he felt her breath shudder, mingling with his, he tilted his head slightly and watched her eyes flutter closed at the same time as his, just before their lips touched.

It was like kissing silk. It was like drinking ambrosia. It was like coming home.

The kiss lasted a breath, maybe two, as light as falling petals, but it made his head swim and his skin tingle and his heart sing for more.

He didn't have time, though.

"I love you, Marinette," he whispered, and with his arms still holding her, he pulled the snake head back. "Second chance."

He was no longer hugging her.

"Let's use these first minutes..."

She was talking, planning, oblivious to what had just happened. What had never happened.

"...Are you okay?" she asked, when he didn't respond after she'd finished talking.

He shook his head, still seeing her expression from just before he went back in time, face flushed, lips slightly open still, unshed tears shining in her eyes, and he wished he could ask her why she looked so heartbroken.


	11. Chapter 11

"Let's -" Foxbug stopped at the sudden exhaustion on her partner's face, visible beneath the lightly tinted sunglasses. Even his hair, pulled back in long, shaggy ponytail, seemed to droop around his face. (Foxbug had been itching to pull it out and see what it looked like loose. She knew it wouldn't work anyway; miraculous costumes were indestructable, and that included hair ties.) "Chevaspik? Did we already..?"

He nodded,

"How many times?" she asked, ignoring her heart's attempts to jump into her throat. _How many failures?_

"Fifteen," he said. "It's been an hour, more or less. I'm not... holding up, as well as I did last time." There was a wobble in his voice and a flush in his cheeks that told him he was ashamed, and she reached out to squeeze his arm.

"Do you want a hug?"

He graced her with a warm, lopsided smile. "Done that twice already," he said. "I promised myself that we'd do some actual planning this time."

The twinkle in his eye made her breath catch, and she wondered if hugging was all they'd done.

She hoped so. Anything else would be leading him on, and she'd promised herself not to do that.

She swallowed. "Okay, what's failed so far?"

"Teleporting the wifi antenna, with or without Lady Wifi on it, covering it with the parachute – the metal in it isn't enough to completely deregulate the signal. Destroying it physically – that's the only thing that stopped Lady Wifi, but it takes both of us, and neither of us are quick enough to save everyone after doing that, even when I set up Voyage to catch half of them. I can't set it up wide enough for everyone on my side, either."

"Did I use any illusions? Did that work?"

"No, you haven't," Chevaspik said thoughtfully. "But I don't see how it could help."

"It might buy us some time so we can prepare a better landing for the victims," Foxbug said, gesturing towards the people hovering in the air just below roof level. "Has anything actually worked?"

"When I destroyed the tower, you did manage to catch most of the people on your side of the roof safely in the parachute. You hung it off a lamp post, and it held nine people. But I haven't mastered the teleportation well enough to get everyone to the ground without serious injury. The starting point and the finish are too close together," he said glumly.

Foxbug nibbled her lower lip, thinking hard. "What does Lady Wifi do? Anything consistent?"

"She always appears on top of the Wifi tower as soon as we get near it. She doesn't interfere when I set up the Voyage for the victims, so she's probably keeping an eye on the tower specifically. And the first thing she does, no matter what, is start filming."

Foxbug turned the possibilities over in her mind, but nothing came to her.

"We need a third ally," she muttered through gritted teeth, leaning on the railing of the dark balcony they were standing on. "Two people to save everyone and one to mess up the Wifi signal and defeat her. But we don't have time!" She glanced at his bracelet. Less than a minute left, and they still had no plan.

He grabbed her shoulder, and she thought they were being attacked before she saw the excitement on his face.

"More than one person," he said. "We need everyone! We can use her camera to talk to the citizens of Paris!"

She frowned. "And tell them what?"

"To hack the police wifi signal! Use it to download a bunch of videos or something!" His face was a picture of mischievious glee and hope, shining through the exhaustion.

"Do you think they could do that in four minutes?"

"_Someone_ must know how! I'm betting she has other prisoners in the building in case this doesn't work, with their phones on them so she can teleport from one to the other. If we can get them to cooperate, too..."

She thought about it. It was a long shot, but they had no other ideas for now. "I can use an illusion to lure her away long enough for you to tell everyone," she said.

"Use Chat Noir," he said. "Trick Hawkmoth into thinking I'm still there."

"Of course," she smirked, and he grinned back.

Then his smile faded. "I still need to figure out how to save everyone," he said. "I know your ladybugs would heal them, but the trauma will stay, and people are losing faith in us."

So he'd seen the comments on the Ladyblog. "Maybe that's the best we can do this time, Kitty," she said gently. "We're only human, people have to know that."

He took a deep breath. "Okay," he said, resigned.

"Now, go back in time and tell me the plan," she said.

Before she could react, he leaned in and kissed her cheek, leaving the skin he'd touched tingling. He drew back, and his smile was both warm and teasing.

_Oh no..._

"Second chance!"

"Let's-"

"Plan, we did, now listen," Chevaspik interrupted her, and she listened, forcing her mind to accept the fact that he'd already relived the next four minutes at least once.

_Several times_, she thought, noticing the fatigue on her partner's face, but she said nothing. He'd explained the plan quickly and was already on the ground, setting up his Voyage portal under the first row of victims. Foxbug glimpsed a sparkle of reflected light and frowned. He wasn't teleporting them to safely to the ground below, that was certain.

"Swimming pool," he mouthed when he saw her looking. She decided to trust that he knew what he was doing and unfolded the parachute that was her Lucky Charm, holding the straps over her forearm instead of strapping it onto her back. Then she hopped lithely up onto the balcony railing to wait.

Chevaspik sent her a thumbs up, and she brought her flute to her lips, invoking her Illusion. A perfect hologram of Chat Noir leapt from the shadows on the other side of the building, and her own heart gave a silly little leap of joy at the sight of him. The Chat Noir she'd created yelled "Cataclysm!" and made a beeline for the Wifi antenna. Chevaspik followed, and Foxbug itched to go, too, to be at the heart of the battle with her partner, but Chevaspik had insisted she wait out of sight.

Lady Wifi appeared on top of the antenna, cackling, just as he'd said she would. She threw up a camera symbol before sending a volley of pause signs after Chat Noir. The Illusion dodged them all and scampered over the rooftops, taunting her. It worked: she was following him!

Foxbug glanced from her partner – the real one – to the windows of the _commissariat_ below. Chevaspik was talking urgently at the camera symbol, and from her place on the balcony she could see movement through the windows.

She focussed again on Lady Wifi, who was getting more and more frustrated with Chat Noir. The Hawkmoth mask flickered on her face, and the villain smirked, running back to the roof and aiming for Chevaspik this time. Chevaspik dodged, and his Chat Noir counterpart – Cataclysm still in hand – lunged for the antenna again.

Lady Wifi nearly got him this time. Foxbug knew she wouldn't be able to hold the Illusion and save the second row of falling victims at the same time. She had to make him vanish now.

She blinked, and Chat Noir scarpered, yelling one last taunt before barrel rolling off the roof. Lady Wifi chased after him and found noone. Bewildered and wary, she spun, but Chevaspik was hiding on a windowsill just below the furthest victim on his row – the one he'd said might not make it into the Voyage portal. The roof was deserted, and Lady Wifi screamed in rage. Foxbug crouched, ready to pounce.

The pauses vanished, and several things happened all at once: Foxbug leapt from the balcony towards the closest line of falling victims, letting the parachute stream out behind her and catch them, cutting off their screams with a series of "oofs!". Just as she felt herself beginning to fall out of her jump, she threw the straps over the top of a lamp post and let go, landing on the ground and barely dodging the parachute as it swung down, not quite brushing the pavement.

At the same time, Chevaspik leapt from his hiding place, caught the police officer who was just too far from the edge of the portal to land safely in it, and set him down on the roof before going after Lady Wifi.

Lady Wifi gave chase, but not for long, and Foxbug arrived on the roof just in time to see a small purple butterfly escape from her phone, crushed under Chevaspik's boot.

Lady Wifi barely had a chance to scream "_No!_" before Foxbug caught and purified the akuma, leaving a dishevelled Alya sitting on the roof.

"L-Ladybug? You look... and is that... OH MY GOD, WHO ARE _YOU_?" Alya reached excitedly for her phone to take a picture of the new hero, only to find him standing on it. She let out a cry of disappointment.

Foxbug left Chevaspik to reassure her and went to check on the contents of her parachute. Three people had managed to work their way out of it already, but they all cheered when she unhooked it – with some difficulty – and set them down on the ground.

"Could you all please get off the parachute? It's my Lucky Charm, I need it to set everything right again," she called, suddenly exhausted. It hadn't taken them that long, had it?

"You heard the lady, get off the parachute!" Lieutenant Roger said, herding the remaining people off it.

"Thanks, Lieutenant," said Foxbug, smiling. "But that means you, too."

She finally gathered the whole huge mess of cord and nylon into her arms and threw it up in the air, yelling "Miraculous Foxbug!" to loud cheers.

Chevaspik landed next to them, holding Alya, who was already talking into her miraculously repaired phone: "...saved by two brand new heroes! Or are they?" Chevaspik set her on her feet and she turned her phone smoothly from him to Foxbug, getting ready to pelt them both with questions.

"Time's up, M'lady," Chevaspik said, showing her his bracelet. "We need to get out of here, fast."

"Sorry Alya, maybe another time!" Foxbug called, already swinging away with Chevaspik hard on her heels. She heard a collective "aww!" from the crowd, and ignored it.

Her earrings beeped urgently. "You go this way, I'll go..."

"This way," he said, grabbing her hand. "We don't need to go our seperate ways any more, remember?"

Foxbug blinked at him. "Right," she said, her head still reeling with unused adrenaline. This had been both one of the easiest _and_ most complicated battles, for her at least. She felt somewhat itchy and dissatisfied. She didn't like leaving all the fighting to him.

Chevaspik pulled on her hand gently, and she followed his jump into a deserted alley. His snake transformation released right as he was landing, closely followed by her Ladybug, and he held out his other hand to catch Sass and Tikki.

"I don't have cheese on me," she said, finding a pocket in her fox costume and fishing a cookie out of it. Tikki bit into it ravenously, but snake kwaami made a face. "Can you share with Tikki?"

"I can eat eggs, cheese or meat," he hissed quietly. "No sugar. It makes me ill."

"I promise we'll find you something else as soon as we can," she assured him. _I am _done_ with sick kwamis,_ she almost added, but didn't.

Sass nodded once and lay down, looking completely spent.

"How many times did it take?" she asked her partner, dreading the answer.

"Eighteen," he said, smiling. "Better than last time, right?"

"That's, like... an hour and a half?"

"Less," he corrected her. "In the beginning sometimes, things went wrong after less than a minute, so I went back quicker." He smiled at her reassuringly, but she could still see the fatigue in his features, and she had to admire his resilience. Especially when he'd come to school with a cold that morning.

"We should detransform completely before somebody else sees us," she said, and he nodded. They spoke the formulas in unison, and she cupped her palm to catch Kaalki and Trixx. "There are cookies in my purse," she told them, guiding them into it. Tikki joined them, still munching on her own cookie, and Adrien gently deposited Sass somewhere inside his shirt. _So that's where he was keeping Plagg,_ she thought.

He was still holding her hand, gripping it just a little too tight, as though afraid she might disappear, and it hit her again that Adrien Agreste, her crush of over a year, was also Chat Noir, who was in love with her.

_We could be together!_

_We could end the world if we did the wrong thing._

A chill went down her spine, and the ghostly vision of Chat Blanc resurfaced in her mind.

"Are you alright?" Adrien's brow puckered in concern, and she realized that she, too, was exhausted.

And hungry.

_First thing's first._

"Let's get lunch early today," she said. School was probably cancelled until the afternoon anyway, because of the akuma attack.

He nodded and took a step forward, only to stumble. She barely managed to catch him, deprived as she was of her superhero reflexes.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly, at the same time as she asked "Are you okay?"

"My legs are a bit wobbly," he admitted. "I'll be fine once I start moving."

Marinette scowled. "You have to stop pretending you're fine when you're not," she told him, putting him back on his feet and positioning herself next to him so he could lean on her if he wanted to. "Let's get you home."

"No!" he said, too loudly in the deserted alley, grabbing her hand again before she could pull him out of it. He lowered his voice and added, "Please, Marinette, not..." He swallowed. "Not without Plagg."

Her heart twisted. "I told you, I haven't managed to heal him yet," she said gently.

"Then let me help you!"

"Even if you do, I don't know how long it'll take!"

His eyes dropped to the ground and he looked away, but she was close enough to see the glimmer of tears. _That's twice I've made him cry in less than twenty-four hours, _she scolded herself.

"I shall accompany him," a high, imperious voice declared. Kaalki had appeared next to them. At Marinette's surprised look, she added, "What? I like this one. He is glorious _and_ famous." She nodded approvingly at something beyond the alley on the main road, and they looked out to see a billboard with Adrien's face plastered on it.

Marinette stifled a giggle, and saw Adrien do the same.

"It would be an honour, if our Guardian agrees," he said solemnly.

"Of course," Marinette smiled. "But first, let's get some lunch."

"Can I have lunch your place, though? Please?" Adrien begged. "I can walk on my own, look." He took a few steps forward, and she realized he was still holding her hand. There was a pleading look in his summer-green eyes. _That's the Adrien equivalent of the babydoll eyes, _she realized. _Does he know how weak I am to that look?_

"Fine," she said. "But I'm making you soup."

His laugh set off traitorous butterflies in her stomach.


	12. Chapter 12

Adrien liked Marinette's parents, he really did. They were warm and caring where his father was cold and distant. They were protective of their daughter, but they trusted her. They were _interested_ in her – her feelings, her ideas, her life.

_Maybe a little too interested_, he thought, watching as a red-faced Marinette growled "Papaaa!" for the nth time.

"What? I'm just saying, you two look very cute together!"

"_Papaaa_! The soup is _burning_!" said Marinette through gritted teeth, tugging on her father's t-shirt in a futile attempt to turn him away from her and Adrien and toward the stove.

"No it's not, it's not even warm yet. You, on the other hand..." Tom made a show of putting his hand on his daughter's forehead and then snatching it back as though burned. "You could fry an egg on that face! Are you sure he didn't give you his cold?" He winked at Adrien.

"PAPA!"

Adrien bit back a nervous giggle and busied himself setting the table. At least this time Tom had a reason to tease them. Thinking back to the time he'd rejected Marinette as Chat Noir (and oh _god_ that memory now came with a whole new layer of embarassment) made him shudder.

_So that's how Ladybug got Marinette to safety that time! Rather, she didn't, she just transformed._

These thoughts kept creeping up on him as his brain began to process what he hadn't had much time to think about yet: that Marinette was Ladybug. Once past the initial shock and joy of realizing the two girls he loved were the same person, he now had to deal with all his memories of both of them coming to the surface in a brand new light. It was making him space out a little – or maybe that was just the fever.

"I'm sorry about my dad," Marinette whispered as she approached the table to pour water into each of the glasses he'd set out. "He's just..."

"A typical dad?" Adrien finished for her. "Honestly, it's fine. I kinda wish mine were like that sometimes."

"Sometimes," she smiled wryly. "Believe me, nosy parents can be really inconvenient. Especially when..."

_Especially when you have to go and save Paris without them figuring you out._

"At least I can cover for you now," he murmured, leaning close to her ear so Tom wouldn't hear him.

"What are you two lovebirds whispering about?" Marinette's mother was poking her head around the door to the flat, smiling at them.

"_Mamaaan_!" Marinette whined.

Sabine chuckled and turned to her husband. "Honey, could you come and answer the phone? There's a line right across the street outside, I don't have time to take orders."

"Don't you two get up to any mischief while we're gone," Tom shook his finger at them with a grin that said he rather thought they should.

"_Papaaa_," Marinette grumbled.

"Don't you let her burn the soup," Sabine said, pointing at Adrien as she headed out after her husband, still smiling.

The door closed, and Marinette deflated with a long sigh. "See what I mean?"

Adrien laughed. "I see what you mean, but I'm still jealous."

"I'm pretty sure they'd adopt you if you asked," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Ew, then I'd be your brother."

Marinette jaw dropped and she planted her hands on her hips and gave him what he could only describe as a Ladybug look. "What do you mean, _ew_? What's wrong with being my brother?!"

Adrien cocked his head to look at her, taking in her expression, a cold droplet of doubt forming in his mind. Did she really not know? Had the second chance kiss meant nothing? Anxiety pooled in his gut. Had he completely misread her?

But then, why was she blushing?

The sight of her bluebell eyes widening – _bluebell eyes – the poem! The card! It must have been her! That meant she did like him, right?_ – And then something other than indignation flickered in them, something that called to him, pulled him closer to her, cutting through the chaos that reigned in his mind. He barely registered taking a step forward, and only realized he was touching her face when the soft heat of her cheek against his thumb make the skin of it tingle.

"Siblings can't date," he murmured.

_There_. That look, that sweet longing in her eyes that made him want to kiss her – and the heartbreaking sadness that stopped him. That was the look she'd given him after their first kiss – the first one he actually remembered, anyway.

Even if she didn't.

"What is it?" he asked.

Her hands came to rest on his chest, and he was sure she could feel his heart thumping with want and worry. She looked down, away from him. "I don't think we can now," she said, her voice uneven.

His heart plummeted. "W-why not?"

She said nothing, but his fingertips brushing her neck could feel the erratic beat of her heart. Something was wrong.

"Marinette, why not?" He couldn't quite keep the wobble out of his voice either this time. "I-if you just don't want to, that's..." It was not fine. She had every right, but he would in no way be fine.

She responded by cupping his hand against her face, leaning into his touch and kissing his wrist, setting his pulse aflame even as dread clenched his stomach.

"I l-love you, Adrien," she said softly, and his heart leapt. "But..." ...aaand it plummeted again. "...I think us dating might be really dangerous. Especially if Hawkmoth found out."

...

..._Was that all?_

"He already knows we care about each other," Adrien said, frowning. "Even just as teammates, I think it's pretty obvious. You don't work together as long and as often as we do without becoming a _little_ close."

"I know," she said. "But... I dunno, dating is... different," she finished lamely.

"This sounds like the reasoning behind us not knowing our identities to me," he said, trying not to let the anger he was suddenly feeling leak into his voice. "It might have been valid at one point, but now?" He cupped her face in both hands now, tilting her chin gently. "Is that really the only reason?"

The fear he saw in her eyes was not what he expected, and it turned his blood to ice. _There's _definitely_ something wrong,_ he found himself thinking. There had to be.

"I need to tell you about something that happened, that you don't remember," she said, confirming his fears. "But I can't do it now, because..." she glanced over her shoulder, and -

"_Crap, the soup_!" They both moved at the same time, but without their superhero costumes, neither was nimble enough to avoid tripping over each other. Adrien just had time to wrap his arm around Marinette, putting his hand between her head and the floor, before they both came crashing down.

They barely had time to groan in pain before the front door opened and Tom walked back in, looking startled to find the two teens on the floor. He frowned and sniffed, and Adrien's throat constricted as he suddenly remembered Weredad again.

"Crap, the soup!" Tom said, stepping around them with surprising agility for a man of his size. He peered into the pot, which had begun to hiss over the fire, as Adrien and Marinette pulled each other upright, nursing new bruises.

"Is it burnt?" Marinette asked gingerly.

Tom dug his spoon into the bottom of the pot. A black something rose to the surface. "Yep." He sighed and turned off the stove, eyed Adrien – who gulped, rubbing the hand that had cushioned Marinette's head – and let out a low chuckle. "Either both of you got distracted, or your boyfriend's an even worse cook that you are," he nudged Marinette.

"Hey!" Marinette poked her father, provoking more chuckles. "I'm a great cook!"

"It's true, I've tried her macarons," Adrien said, relaxing enough to smile a little and repressing the urge to jump up and down because _she hadn't denied that he was her boyfriend._

Tom shook his head. "Marinette is an excellent _baker_," he corrected, winking at his fuming daughter. "Cooking, on the other hand, is not her forte."

They ended up having quiche and salad, followed by a cheese platter (he snuck some into his shirt for Sass, with a pang of nostalgia for Plagg) and leftover _pains au chocolat_ from that morning, but Adrien didn't enjoy the meal as much as he should have. Marinette's words kept repeating in his mind.

_Something that happened, that you don't remember._

Was she talking about Dark Cupid? They'd never really talked about what he'd said or done while under Dark Cupid's spell, and he'd only found out she'd kissed him when Nadja Chamack had revealed it to the world during that godsawful interview. Plagg had teased him mercilessly, so he knew he'd said some nasty things to her, but she'd never shown any sign of taking that personally, had she? Ladybug – _Marinette_ – knew better than that.

What about Oblivio, then? Did she remember something he didn't? Surely if they'd kissed, that meant they'd figured out their identities, right? Or maybe not, who knew what had happened during that forgotten hour?

What if she'd know all this time? Left herself a message, filmed something on her phone, knowing the miraculous cure would erase their memories at the same time as it brought them back? Nah. He might have done that – if he'd had the idea at the time – but Ladybug was way too cautious to do anything _that_ irresponsible. Besides, the shock on her face – the change in how she'd acted with him...

"...back to school?"

Sabine was addressing him as she took his empty plate.

Adrien blinked, coming back to reality. "Sorry, what did you say?"

She frowned and placed her hand on his forehead, mirroring her daughter's gesture in the classroom earlier. It was even more motherly coming from an actual mother. "Honey, I think you should go home to bed," she said.

Nobody had called him "honey" in over a year. He repressed the urge to hug her and cry.

"I'm fine," he said instead, flashing his model smile.

She raised an eyebrow at him, unconvinced. "You have a fever, young man, and I'd prefer it if you _didn't_ pass it on to my daughter. She missed enough school yesterday."

Because of him. Right. He'd promised to help her with Plagg, too. When had he said that? Did she remember?

"Marinette and I have a project to work on tonight, though," he said.

Marinette turned from where she was washing dishes, looking confused. She eyed him skeptically for a second, and they trading a look of mutual understanding – before she betrayed him. "I can work on it on my own for today. You can catch up when you're not zoning out all over the place."

Adrien's shoulders slumped. Sabine patted him on the shoulder. "You're more than welcome back here as soon as you're better," she said.

Being at home wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be. For one thing, he had not one, but two kwamis to keep him company, and their quiet chatter was almost soothing enough to take his mind off whatever it was Marinette needed to tell him. Almost.

For another, he had decided to visit her that evening. After all, he _had_ agreed to help her heal Plagg, even if she didn't remember it. And if they could finish their talk, if he could reassure her in any way and maybe _maybe_ convince her that breaking both their hearts was a surefire way to get at least one of them akumatized, then he could almost be grateful to Plagg for getting sick in the first place.

The cough syrup and pills Nathalie had made him take as soon as he got through the door were making him feel pleasantly woozy, but despite this, he didn't get any proper sleep at all, only short, dreamless dozes between hours of staring wistfully at the clock and listening to the kwamis' talk.

The afternoon wore on with agonizing sluggishness, as though time itself had contracted his fever. At least the dark thoughts he'd had to contend with last night were gone, replaced with a sort of exhausted restlessness.

16:30. She'd be leaving school by now, heading across the street to her house, which was only a few blocks away from his (how lucky was that?). She'd probably greet her parents and grab a pastry, maybe lingering to help with the bakery, or maybe she'd head straight to her room to start on her homework, or forego it in favour of decifering the manual she'd talked about, the one with Plagg's remedy hidden within its pages.

18:30. Nathalie had brought a tray of food and left it next to his bed. He'd murmured a thank you too quiet for her to hear, and waited until she was gone before sitting up and devouring the gourmet chicken noodle soup and fresh bread and comté cheese. He wondered if Marinette were already eating, and seemed to remember that no, her family ate together after closing time, which meant around 8 o'clock.

20:30. Was now okay? He felt more awake and restless after an afternoon of napping. The kwamis had stopped talking and fallen asleep in the crook of his neck, cool scales and warm fuzz, and he'd spend the past hour trying not to fidget in order to avoid waking them, but it was getting more and more difficult and oh, he _wished_ Plagg were here, he wasn't sure Sass or Kaalki would even know if now was the right time to go or if maybe he should wait...

By the time 9pm rolled around, Adrien was a ball of restless energy. Unable to remain still for a second longer, he rolled onto his stomach, cupping his hands to catch the kwamis, and gently prodded them awake.

Kaalki did _not_ enjoy being woken, and it took him some time to convince her to let him don the glasses which rested on his bedside table and transform into Chevalier. Once that was done, however, he leapt out of the window and onto the rooftops, Sass tucked in his collar, and the sudden rush of freedom was worth it.

He really ought to have noticed this in his time as Chevaspik, but Kaalki's miraculous made him _fast_. He was landing on Marinette's balcony in a clatter of iron-toed cowboy boots in less time than it took Chat Noir to cover a single block, fighting the itch to keep running.

"Another time, Kaalki," he promised as he crouched to knock on the skylight. He paused, took a breath.

The skylight opened just as anxiety was freezing his hand, and a pair of bluebell eyes draped in streetlight-orange shadow greeted him with a slight smirk.

"Better already?"

"Sure, now I'm with you," he said, Chat Noir charm spilling out of him on reflex – and his heart stuttered when her eyes widened, just before she blushed and looked away.

There was an awkward silence during which Marinette seemed to debate whether to let him in or not.

"Let's sit on the roof for a minute," she said, pushing the skylight all the way open and pulling herself up with practised ease, her legs still hanging through the window above her bed.

Adrien swallowed. "Are you going to tell me about... whatever it was you wanted to talk about?" he asked, suddenly wishing he were helping her decifer millenia-old miraculous code instead.

"Yeah," she said in an oddly strained voice. He settled cross-legged on the roof next to her, the questions he'd been trying to suppress all afternoon clamouring to the front of his mind even as he dreaded to hear them answered.

He chose one. "So, what happened that I don't remember?"

Marinette was silent for a moment, staring down through the skylight to the pink mess of bedsheets below her feet. Was she having second thoughts about telling him? He reached out and touched her hand hesitantly, afraid she might flinch away, as she sometimes had when he'd touched her as Adrien, before they knew they were so much more than classmates. So much more than friends.

Her fingers clenched around his, more seeking reassurance than reassuring him. She closed her eyes, grimaced, snapped them open again. Took a deep hiss of a breath.

"I need to tell you about the time you got akumatized," she said. "I need to tell you about Chat Blanc."


	13. Chapter 13

Before she began, Marinette's suggested Chevalier detransform back into Adrien so Kaalki and Sass could join Tikki in her bedroom and give them some privacy.

As soon as he'd done it, though, she regretted the decision. Telling Chevalier, the horse miraculous version of Chat Noir, that they couldn't be together was one thing. Telling Adrien was going to be quite another.

"Now will you tell me what happened?" Adrien asked. He'd removed his shoes so he could put his legs over the lip of her skylight too without getting dirt on her bed. He was cocking his head, looking at her with gentle concern, though his hands gripping the edge of the window told her he was nervous.

Might as well get it over with. Marinette took a deep breath and decided to start from the beginning.

"Remember that beret I dropped off from your Brazilian fan club once?"

Adrien nodded.

"Well, it wasn't from a fan club. I made that up. It was from me. Originally, I'd signed the package, but while I was running back, Bunnix appeared out of her burrow in front of me and told me something had happened that would change the world forever, and I had to go fix it.

"Bunnix?" Adrien's eyebrows puckered in alarm, and Marinette nodded.

"I didn't know what she meant, but she took me through her burrow into a world where Paris was... destroyed."

She took another deep breath. Adrien reached over and picked up her hand, squeezing it in both of his.

"Destroyed how?" he prompted.

"There was water everywhere. Way past the rooftops. The Eiffel Tower was lying on one side with two feet sticking out of the water. There were buses and things, just floating... And in the middle of it all..." Her voice wobbled, and she decided it didn't matter if she cried as long as she just kept talking. "In the middle of it all, all alone for god knows how long, singing that kitty-on-the-roof song, was... you. Akumatized."

She felt his hands stiffen on hers, but he said nothing, and she continued.

"He was..." She stopped. If she wanted him to understand how much this scared her, she had to tell it to him the way she remembered it. "_You,_ were all white. You had blue eyes. You called yourself Chat Blanc. You were... happy to see me at first, but then you attacked me and tried to take my miraculous. Then when I fought you off, you apologized. You said you'd done bad things. You c-cried... and then you attacked me again. You kept doing that, trying to convince me to give them to you and then attacking me when it didn't work. And then... you called me Marinette. You said I'd broken your heart." Her voice cracked, and she felt his hands almost leave hers so he could hug her, but she clamped her other hand on top of his and squeezed them. She didn't know if she'd be able to tell him the rest of the story if she could hear and feel how her words were hurting him from inside of a hug. And hurt him she must.

She took a deep, shuddering breath.

"You said a bunch of stuff that I didn't understand at the time. You said everything had been perfect until Hawkmoth found out. And that it was our l-love that d-did this to the world." He tried to reach for her again but she shook her head, unable to even look at him in case the distress she saw on his face stopped her from talking. "You said you wanted my miraculous so you could combine it with yours and make a wish, so that w-we could be i-in love again -" She squeezed her eyes shut against the sobs trying to climb up her throat. She felt his hands twitch, but aside from his thumb stroking the back of her hand a little faster than was comforting, he didn't move. She took another deep breath.

"When I still wouldn't give you my earrings, you said I didn't understand, and cataclysmed the beam I was standing on so I fell into the water. I think you did it on purpose, so I'd see... what I s-saw."

Marinette swallowed, and wondered if it was really necessary to tell him this part. She was probably hurting him enough as it was, making him feel guilty about this thing he hadn't actually done. But if she didn't tell him everything, how could she be sure he'd understand, and let her go?

"What did you see?" he asked, and she tried to ignore the crack in his voice.

"Myself," she barely whispered. "It looked like a statue of me, and there was one of Hawkmoth too, but when I touched it, it just...disintegrated."

A sharp gasp almost made her look at him, but she couldn't she couldn't she _couldn't _or she'd stop. She squeezed her eyes shut. The next part came out in a rush.

"I got out of the water and asked you what you'd done, and you said you hadn't done it on purpose. Then you said I didn't love you any more, and – and if I wasn't going to h-help you, then you m-might as well destroy _everything_..." Another sniff, another deep breath, eyes shut tight, seeing horrors in white as she squeezed his hands, unable to tell which one of them was trembling. "You held up your hand and made this huge cataclysm that kept growing and growing until I couldn't see anything else, and I-I was so scared, Chat, I didn't know what to do, so... I said I'd give you my miraculous-"

Marinette's voice broke on "miraculous", and she barely had time to register that he'd let go of her hands before he engulfed her in a hug so tight that it hurt. Sobs poured out of her like a crumbling dam, and she bunched his shirt in her fists and buried her face in it, drenching it, her own body wracked with them while he hugged her and rocked her and stroked her hair and back, kissing the tears off her cheeks and whispering "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..." for this thing he hadn't done, and she wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault, it was hers, but she could no longer speak, could barely breathe...

How long they stayed like that, neither could tell, but by the time Marinette's sobs finally subsided enough for her to speak again, he'd managed to pull her into his lap. His shirt was soaked.

"I'm the one who should be sorry," she managed.

"No," he choked, and it occurred to her that some of the tears might be his. "Hawkmoth is the one who should be sorry." Adrien's jaw clenched around the name of their enemy, and she felt his hands spasm as he stopped himself from balling them into fists. He took a deep breath and she felt some of the tension dissipate, though not all of it. He nuzzled her hair and murmured, "Tell me the rest."

She released the two fistfuls of shirt and wound her arms around him for what felt like it might be the last time.

"I didn't know what to do," she said. "At some point during the battle I'd called my Lucky Charm, but it just gave me an eraser, and I didn't know what it meant or how to use it. I'd broken your staff, your tail... I didn't know where the akuma was. And then, just as I'd given up... you said 'I'm not Chat Noir any more, I'm Chat Blanc', and you flicked your bell. And that's how I knew where the akuma was. Because you showed it to me."

He kissed her head again, stroking her hair. "Go on," he said. "What was the eraser for?"

"I realized the only risky thing I'd done that morning was deliver your present as Ladybug and sign it with my real name. I figured you must have put two and two together, and told maybe one person, who told another, and so on. I didn't think... I never imagined that _you_ might be Chat Noir." She gave a soft little laugh. "You really do act differently when you're in costume."

His only reaction was to hold her tighter.

"So I got Bunnix to take me back ten minutes before she found me, and erased my name on the present. Then, after the miraculous ladybugs had fixed everything, I went to leave, and you came in, and I made up that thing about the fanclub. So you wouldn't figure it out, and... I guess in that timeline you didn't tell anyone at all, you just... found out that I l-liked you. And when we started dating, somehow... Hawkmoth found out. And used that information to akumatize you. And that's why..." Another sob squeezed itself into her words, but she had to finish. "That's why we can't be together."

There was a long, tense silence.

"So, you're telling me that we can't be together because... our love will _end the world?_"

_Oh no, oh no oh no..._

"Adrien-"

"_Bullshit!_"

The word exploded out of him, and even though she was expecting it, she jumped back. Adrien's face was livid, belying the gentleness with which he now held her shoulders. "I'm sorry Marinette," and his voice was not one bit sorry, "but this can't... it doesn't make _sense_! I understand why you're scared, really I do, and I'm sorry-" his voice caught, tears shone in his eyes, "I'm _so sorry_ you had to go through all this, but..." He took a breath, determination lining his every feature, and she knew they were doomed even as he said, "Marinette, we're not _cursed_! Sure, things went wrong in _that_ timeline, but Bunnix came to get you so you'd fix it, and she hasn't come so far, so surely in this one..."

She had to try. She had to. "Adrien, we can't rely on Bunnix to come get us every time something goes wrong! She only came to get me that time because the whole of Paris was destroyed! The goddamn _moon_ was split in half!" Fresh tears blurred her vision even as she felt one of his fall onto her hand, still bunching his shirt. "Please, Adrien, I can't... I can't go through that again, I..." she hiccuped. "I still d-dream about it... I couldn't bear to see you get akumatized ever again..."

He cupped her face and kissed her cheek, resting his forehead on hers, and his voice broke when he spoke. "So you're breaking both our hearts now?"

It felt like a punch in the gut. She'd thought she was suffering before, but this... she wasn't going to survive this. Neither of them were.

"LOOK OUT!"

The squeal came from her right, and she looked up in alarm to see Tikki hovering between them and something dark and fluttering, and horribly familiar.

Marinette's body moved on its own. It wrapped around Adrien and pulled him through the skylight, her forearm cushioning his head before it landed on her pillow. She barely had time to register the startled flush on his face before the skylight clattered shut above them and Tikki, Sass, Kaalki and Trixx phased through it and surrounded them.

"Tikki-!"

"No, Marinette, if you're akumatized while you're transformed it's all over!" Tikki cried, watching in horror as the akuma began to wriggle its way between the hinges of the skylight.

"Then what-?!"

"Kiss me."

She turned to Adrien, incredulous, and barely had time to say "What-?" before he grabbed her face and collided with her in a clumsy mash of lips and teeth.

"Ow," she gasped when he pulled back, and then froze when she saw his expression. His _smile_.

"You don't want me to get akumatized? Don't break my heart," he said in a breathy rush, positively _beaming_ even as his eyes flicked apprehensively from her to the akuma over her shoulder. She tried to turn her head to glance at it, but he was still holding her face and wouldn't let her. "Look at me," he said. "Only me. In this timeline, we're meant to be together. That akuma is _proof_. Before, maybe it was too early, but now..." he let out a breathless laugh, and she blinked. He wasn't just looking for excuses, he really believed it. Marinette's mind began to race, searching for a flaw in his reasoning unable to stop a bright and giddy something take hold of her heart.

"Marinette, I love you," Adrien said, his eyes shining with a sincerity that threatened to undo her completely. "I love you so much, and I know you love me. If you didn't, this whole thing wouldn't have hurt you so much, but now..." his thumb stroked her cheek as he looked at her like she was his whole world. "Now, it doesn't have to. Not any more."

He waited for her to arrive at the same conclusion as him, smiling wider and wider as he watched her expression change. He was right. Bunnix hadn't turned up when she'd discovered his identity, nor when Lady Wifi had revealed that Marinette had a crush on him and locked them up in a closet, forcing Marinette to reveal her identity to him. In the very least, Paris wouldn't be destroyed because they knew. And it wouldn't lose its superheroes as long as they didn't get akumatized.

Which meant they had to follow their hearts, for once.

Hers was close to bursting_._

She glanced over her shoulder at the akuma, and he let her this time, hands dropping to his sides as he shifted beneath her. The akuma was floating aimlessly near the skylight, its targets all but lost.

"Marinette." She turned back towards him and was startled to find that he'd pushed himself up onto his elbows so that their faces were just a few scant centimeters away from each other, their hair tickling each others' foreheads. He caught her gaze and held it. Her breath hitched, and she felt his own breath shudder, saw his cheeks flush and his gaze flit from her eyes to her lips and back again. "Kiss me," he said again, his voice low and pleading this time.

Her eyes fluttered closed as her lips found his, and the contact ignited her entire bloodstream. Her mind blanked out, her senses went into overdrive, and suddenly every single place where his skin touched hers burned with a searing heat she found herself wanting more of, more and more and more. She heard him hum breathlessly, pulling away, and she chased his lips with a wimper, catching them again as his arms folded around her, pulling her closer, closer, closer.

It was like sinking into honey.

It was like melting.

It was like coming home.

"It's getting away!"

A high hiss broke them apart, and they shared a shocked glance before Sass flew between them and back up, pulling their attention with him.

The akuma was escaping.

"Now, Marinette!" Tikki's voice cried.

It took a second for her brain to kick itself back into gear, but when it did she jumped upwards, out of Adrien's arms, pushing against the skylight as she gasped "Tikki, spots on!" without once taking her eyes off the akuma. She grabbed her yoyo and caught it, deevilizing it faster than she'd ever done before.

She released the butterfly and felt a rush of something almost like gratitude as she watched it flutter off into the night.

Quiet settled around them again, though her heart was still trying to beat its way out of her chest like a horse driven mad by heat and adrenaline and pure, unadulterated joy. She looked down at Adrien, and found him staring back at her with something like awe.

She grinned, and he seemed to come to his senses, smiling back.

"By the way," he said, pushing messy hair out of his eyes, "I promised to help you figure out how to make Plagg better during one of the second chances this afternoon. You told me to remind you."

Ladybug dropped to her knees and _pounced_, grabbing his face and kissing everywhere she could reach – ears eyes nose cheeks mouth – until he giggled and kissed her back. His hands reached for her hair and he tugged gently at her ribbons until she whispered "spots off" against his lips and her hair ties slipped off in his fingers. He dropped them, tangling his them into her hair with one hand while the other cupped her cheek gently, almost reverently.

"I love you," she said. "I love you so much, Adrien Agreste. I love you and I love Chat Noir, and I love every other possible version of you." She kissed him one more time, just to be sure he knew it, and then pulled back just enough to rest her forehead against his. "And you're right," she said. "It's time to get my kitty back."


	14. Chapter 14

Adrien couldn't concentrate, and honestly, it wasn't surprising. Today he'd learned that a) Marinette, the girl he'd been crushing on, was in love with him; b) she was Ladybug, aka – the other girl he was in love with; and c) he'd once been akumatized into a pale blue-eyed version of himself that had destroyed Paris, killed everyone he loved (and Hawkmoth) and _split the moon in half,_ and he didn't even remember it because Bunnix and Ladybug had fixed everything.

Everything, that is, except the relationship they'd undoubtedly had in that timeline, which had almost not been allowed to happen in _this_ timeline because Marinette had managed to deduce that their love would destroy the world.

Adrien had never been so grateful to an akuma. Hell, Adrien could have kissed Hawkmoth right then and there (but also yeeted him into the Eiffel Tower and taken his miraculous because Hawkmoth was the reason they'd had to hide from each other in the first place).

Oh, and d) Marinette was an amazing kisser. Mind-blowing. Or maybe he was just that obsessed with her, but either way, ever since they'd stopped, he'd been yearning to lean over – she was _right there_ – and do it again.

Admittedly, Adrien had limited experience with kissing. Not counting the slobbers he'd shared with Chloe when they were small children playing house, and the two (or more?) he'd shared with Ladybug without remembering them, he'd kissed Kagami exactly one time and it had just felt awkward and wrong. Yet even the clumsy tooth smash he'd pulled Marinette into to save her from the akuma had lit a soft, relentless fire under his skin that rekindled every time he so much as glanced at her.

It was very distracting.

Adrien found himself hoping she was less distracted by him than he was by her, while at the same time ardently wishing for the opposite.

_Plagg,_ he thought._ Think about Plagg. Think about having to go back without him._

The idea felt like being doused in cold water. It had been forty-eight hours and he missed the abrasive little cat-god terribly.

But it still didn't stop fluttery heat tingling under his skin every time their arms brushed, or when he focussed on the way her thigh was pressed flush against his.

Technically there was no need for them to be sitting so close together. Marinette had lent him her tablet and transferred a copy of the Guardian book onto her computer, so _technically_ he could have gone to sit on her chaise or her bed. Sitting in the other chair at her desk (where she'd kicked his butt at Ultimate Mecha Strike III that one time and now he thought about it, maybe that was when he started falling for her), close enough for their bodies to be in constant contact, wasn't strictly necessary.

In his defence, she had done nothing whatsoever to discourage him.

He blinked and frowned at the tablet in his hands. Marinette had shown him the symbols that supposedly spelled out Plagg's name, and he'd been going through the manual from the beginning, while Marinette was looking for any information pertaining to healing or potions. So far he'd gone through nintey pages and found two mentions, neither of which had been useful. There were 851 pages.

Adrien took a deep breath and sighed it out slowly. There was nothing about Plagg on this page, nor on the next two, and then Marinette moved to tuck her hair behind her ear (most of it was pulled into a messy bun that gave him a delicious view of the back of her neck and reminded her of that time she'd outwitted Kwamibuster as Multimouse and maybe _that_ had been the start of his crush on her?) ...and he was distracted again.

_Focus_, he scolded himself.

He felt her tense up. "Here," she said, with more hope in her voice than he'd heard in the last...

(he glanced at the time on her computer screen. It was 3:14AM.)

...hour and a half.

Adrien peered uncomprehendingly at the part of the screen she was pointing at. "What does it say?" he asked.

Marinette's brow furrowed, and she didn't reply straight away. "It's something to do with fusing Tikki and Plagg," she eventually replied. "I overlooked it before because I thought I knew what it said – it does talk about the wish you can make and the consequences of that wish."

Adrien felt the blood drain from his face. "You mean the only way to heal Plagg would be to fuse him and Tikki and wish for it?" he said, unable to keep the dread out of his voice. Wouldn't it be impossible to fuse them in the first place without the holder getting sick? Would another kwami get sick as a result of the wish? Would one of them die? Kwamis couldn't die, though, right...?

Marinette put an end to his panicky thought spiral by squeezing his shoulder. "No," she said, still peering at the computer screen. "We wouldn't have to make a wish. I think the healing is a different thing you can do while they're combined." Her hand wandered down his arm to his hand and entwined their fingers. He resisted the sudden temptation to kiss it.

"How?" he asked instead.

"I'm... still decifering some of it," she said. The concentrated frown deepened, and Adrien felt a little useless. "It's so weird," she muttered, half to herself. "When Tikki got ill, Master Fu just put his hands over her body for a while and closed his eyes, and after a few minutes she was fine."

Adrien blinked. "Wait, _Tikki's_ been ill?" He watched Marinette's expression go from concentration to a grimace of remembered guilt.

"She caught a cold once after we'd fought in the rain," she said. "I was late for school when I found out, and I was stupid enough to wait until lunch break. It was the day Rose got akumatized for the first time, and I couldn't transform because..."

"It wasn't your fault, Marinette!" Tikki interrupted her, swooping up between Marinette and the screen. "I'm the one who told you I could wait!"

"I _lost_ you, Tikki," Marinette retorted. "Chloe had you for, like, an hour."

"Wait, _Chloe_ got hold of _Tikki_?!" Adrien saw Marinette flinch at his words and immediately regretted them. He squeezed her hand, and she graced him with a half-smile.

"I fell down the steps in front of school," she admitted. "You caught me, actually, but my bag was open and Tikki flew out. By the time I realized she'd gone, Chloe had found her and grabbed her."

Adrien's mind was trying to connect dots that existed in totally different areas of his memory. It made his brain ache. "Wait," he said. "Princess Perfume happened before Chloe ever got a miraculous, right?"

"She thought I was a toy," Tikki piped up. "I didn't have the strength to phase out of her bag, so I stayed very still until Marinette found me again."

Marinette was frowning at the screen again. She was biting her lower lip, which meant she was either thinking or worrying or both. "Tikki, do you remember Plagg ever getting ill before?" she asked.

"Yes," Tikki answered. "But I didn't see him being healed. In fact, often it passed on its own, although never without disastrous consequences. Usually he'd just eaten too much cheese. I bet that's what it is this time, too."

"Wait a second," Adrien said. "Do you mean to tell me that all this mess happened because my kwami _ate_ _too much cheese?_"

"This is nothing," Tikki deadpanned. "You should've seen Atlantis."

Adrien blinked, wondering whether he could get away with strangling Plagg. The tiny catastrophe (pun _entirely_ intended) would probably phase through his hands, he thought. "I'm putting him on a diet as soon as he's better," he said, deciding that would be revenge enough. Tikki giggled.

"Guys, I think I've got something," Marinette gasped excitedly. "It's just a theory, but... I have fuse Plagg with Tikki, call up my Lucky Charm, and it should be a potion or something to eat that'll make him better."

"A theory?" Adrien questioned.

Marinette's eyes were still scanning the page. She flipped through to the next one, too, consulted the handwritten list of symbols in front of her, and checked again. "I think it's worth a shot," she said, turning to look at Adrien with a determined excitement in her eyes that made his heart skip several beats.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"I'm sure about what I've read, and I think it's worth the risk. Will you help me?"

"Of course," he said. Adrien would have said "of course" to anything she asked right then.

Marinette grinned and stood. "Tikki, spots on!"

Watching her transform was... there was no other word for it, it was _sexy_. Adrien swallowed hard and wondered vaguely if watching _him_ transform would have the same effect on her, or if he was just weird.

When she began to rummage under her desk and pulled the miracle box out of a pile of fabric, though, he caught her arm.

"You might not want to do this in your room," he warned her. "I found out he was ill when I tried to transform and it made me throw up."

Marinette's grimaced. "He didn't warn you?"

"Said he didn't want to bother me," Adrien remembered. "In hindsight, he probably just didn't want me to yell at him for pigging out on cheese."

Ladybug rolled her eyes. "Right," she said. "And I guess maybe we shouldn't take the risk of letting him out of the ring inside my house. I don't want another Hole in here." She frowned. "Where should we go?"

"We could go to my house?" Adrien smirked. "My dad can afford any damages."

Ladybug snorted. "I don't think that's a good idea," she said. "We need a place where it won't matter too much." Her eyes widened suddenly. "The Hole! We'll go back to The Hole!"

Adrien gasped. "Great idea! He can use it as a sick bucket!" But then he frowned. "People might see us."

"I'll use an Illusion," Ladybug said, winking at him.

"Combining _three_ miraculouses? Isn't that too much?"

She pursed her lips, thinking. "Okay, _you'll_ use an Illusion. That okay, Trixx?"

Trixx, who had been nibbling on a cookie crumb he'd found in Tikki's nest, flew up to grin at Adrien eagerly. "Ready when you are!" he said.

Ladybug unhooked the foxtail pendant from around her neck and leaned forward to put it around Adrien's herself. He could have sworn she bit back a smirk when his breath hitched. "Ready, Adrien?" she asked.

Adrien grinned back at the mischievious-looking fox kwami. "Trixx, let's pounce!"

Ladybug and Goupix (Adrien's fox hero name, which she was sure she'd heard somewhere before) could see Marinette's balcony from their perch on the roof of the Collège François Dupont. It made Ladybug a little nervous, because it was getting close to 4AM, which was when one of her parents – they took it in turns – got up to start working on that morning's bread. They wouldn't be able to see what was going on in front of the school (unless the operation turned out more... spectacular than she'd anticipated), but they might hear her sneaking back in. She'd put Kaalki and Sass back in the miracle box, just in case, but she hoped she wouldn't have to invent an excuse for being out in the middle of the night.

"Ready, M'lady?" Goupix whispered next to her. The fox miraculous suited him even better than the horse miraculous had. It made him look somehow adorable and mysterious at the same time, in a somewhat androgynous way.

"Do your thing, Ch-Goupix," she whispered back.

Goupix stood and spun gracefully on his heel, playing a soft, haunting series of notes. She looked down at the place where The Hole had been cordoned off, with proper police tape this time. Nothing happened.

"Done," he said.

"Are you sure?"

"Trust me, we're completely invisible."

_Oh_. "You put the Illusion on us," she remarked. "Good thinking."

He shot her a smile and a wink that sent the blood rushing to her cheeks, before dropping lithely to the ground. She followed, opened up her yoyo, and pulled out the small box containing the cat miraculous. She took a deep breath.

"Let me open the box," Goupix said suddenly. "That way you have both hands free to grab the ring and put it on your finger as fast as you can."

She nodded. "Good idea. I'll combine them as soon as it's on. With luck, he won't even have time to throw up."

Ladybug hoped her good luck would be enough to counter Plagg's bad.

Goupix took the box from her hands and stood in front of her. "Ready?" he asked, and she nodded. "One... two... three!"

She snatched the ring so fast she nearly dropped it. Squinting in the bright light that flashed from the box, she fumbled with the ring and managed to get it onto her finger, shouting "Tikki, Plagg, combine!"

The combination felt different. A sense of awe and elation washed over her as Plagg's cat ears appeared in her hair, which lengthened once more into her version of the cat's tail, though she saw her red ribbons braided into it when it flicked over her shoulder. This combination felt heavier, but also more powerful and more stable than any other she'd had.

At least, until the nausea hit.

Ladybug – she had no time to think of a name for this combo – turned to The Hole just in time to empty the entire contents of her stomach into it.

Marinette had been sick a number of times in her life. As Sabine had pointed out the day before, she'd always had a sensitive stomach. As a child, she'd learned the hard way not to steal too many cakes from the bakery. As she'd grown older, the digestive issues had become less frequent, but they still occurred with enough regularity that she was now mostly used to the sensations and the pain they brought with them, and she knew how to deal with them.

This was different. This was – to put it lightly – worse than anything she'd imagined. It felt like her stomach was trying to turn itself inside out and crawl up her oesophagus. Or like someone trying to fold it over and over and over. Bile like molten metal burned her throat and churned her belly, which was cramping so painfully that her head swam and her knees buckled. She felt Goupix catch her and guide her to her knees in front of The Hole, into which she was still dry-wretching uncontrollably. The contact of his hands only served to increase her nausea – _Adrien's_ hands, which she'd wished she could hold forever, but now even the idea of touching another human made her gag even more.

He was talking, saying something urgently, which she could hear, but not interpret. She had to do something, call her Lucky Charm, but she couldn't remember how. She could only focus on the things that were making it worse – the smell of her own vomit, the sound of it, the heat and pressure of his hands on her shoulders, the edge of the costume on her neck, even the orange of his suit in the corner of her eye, and the red on hers. She squeezed her eyes shut.

His hands moved to her hands, which was better than them being on her shoulders, but he was pulling on one of them and she needed it to lean over The Hole -

The nausea vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Ladybug blinked her eyes open, and turned to find Goupix crouching next to her, the Cat ring in his hand and worry bordering on panic lining his features.

"Are you okay?" he asked, putting his hand back on her shoulder. It felt pleasant again, and she revelled in the relief of not being sick.

She nodded, sitting back and wiping her mouth with shaky hands. "Was it like that with you?" she asked as her breathing slowed.

"Not that bad," he said. "It was sudden, but I could still stand and say the detransformation words."

"I couldn't even think," she said. "Everything made it feel worse – even colours and sounds!"

Goupix's eyes widened. "Maybe this was a bad idea." He was looking more and more worried, and her heart dipped unpleasantly as she thought about what they'd do if this didn't work. She couldn't afford to fail.

Ladybug shook her head. "Let me try again," she said. "I felt fine for maybe a second before it hit. Maybe if I do it as soon as the fusion's finished..."

"Are you sure?" Goupix ventured closer in order to push her fringe out of her eyes, and she fairly fell into his arms.

"I can do this," she said. "I _have_ to."

"You don't."

"I want to," she insisted, and he hugged her tight.

"I'll catch the Lucky Charm if the nausea comes on again," he volunteered, and she nodded against his chest.

"Shove down my throat if you have to. I don't want this to last any longer than it has to."

They pulled apart and stood once more, facing each other. Goupix handed her the ring. She held it at the tip of her finger and took several deep breaths. At least this time they wouldn't have to worry about Plagg being sick before she got the ring on; apparently her mind had been only to eager to renounce its claim on this miraculous, and he was already inside the ring.

_One more try, _she thought. _Just get through this one last time and then it'll be over._

She shoved the ring onto her finger.

"Tikki, Plagg, combine!" she shouted, and even before the light had settled on her body she was throwing her yoyo into the air. "Lucky Charm!"

As the Lucky Charm fell, the nausea hit her like a punch in the stomach, and she doubled over, hands flailing, the tiny charm bouncing off them dangerously close to The Hole -

Ladybug saw a white-and-orange gloved hand shoot out and grab the spotted thing, retracting just in time for her to retch again. _Oh gods, let this be over_. She could feel his hand on her back again, and then something was shoved into her mouth. Her body did _not_ agree to this treatment, but she forced her jaws shut, forced the gross salty-squishy thing towards her throat, forced her head to tilt backwards, pushing back the hand that was holding her plait out of the way, tears streaming from her eyes. She pinched her nose shut and, with a herculean effort, gulped the thing down.

The effect was instant. Ladybug opened her eyes – she hadn't realised she'd closed them – and found herself gasping against Goupix's hand on her mouth. She raised a hand to give his a weak pat, and he peeled it back, wiping her mouth with a tenderness that made her heart backflip strangely. She'd just been violently sick in front of _Adrien Agreste_ and now he was wiping the spit off her face with his gloved hand, but when she peeked at his expression, his eyes shone with relief and awe.

_How can you see me do something so gross and look at me like I've just saved the world?_

"You probably did," he chuckled, and she realized she must have spoken out loud. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yes," she said. "Thank you."

He wiped the offending hand on his thigh, and Ladybug let out a mortified giggle. He smiled as his other hand left her plait but lingered on her cheek, and she marvelled at the sudden and _pleasant_ heat that bloomed there.

"You wanna yell at your kwami for me?" she asked. "I'm not sure I'm up to it yet."

Goupix nodded solemnly. "It would be my pleasure," he said.


	15. Chapter 15

Caline Bustier knew her class better than she let on. She made a point of it, and she tried to use her knowledge to do what she thought was best for their growth.

For instance, she knew that Juleka and Rose were practically inseparable, so sometimes she made them work with other people just so they'd learn how. Chloe, on the other hand, was vulnerable underneath her spoiled brat exterior. Separating her from Sabrina and putting her with people who didn't like her just served to harden that exterior. She knew that Ivan and Kim didn't get along well, so if she did put them in the same group, it was important to put a mediator in as well, like Max or Marinette.

She knew Alya sometimes needed someone to temper and focus her enthusiasm, that Nino had trouble concentrating without background music, that Alix was motivated by competition, that Mylène was both more anxious and braver than she appeared, that Adrien took everything at face value, and that Nathaniel hid a temper beneath his shyness.

Then there were the things she suspected, which mostly had to do with who had a crush on whom, and this was the stuff she secretly lived for. Currently, she suspected that Max had a crush on Kim who had a crush on Alix. She _knew_ that Nathaniel still held a place in his heart for Marinette, but she _suspected_ that he and his writer friend from the class next door might be dating. She _knew_ that Juleka and Rose were going out, but she _suspected_ they might not be doing so exclusively. She _knew_ that Marinette had a painfully obvious crush on Adrien, and she _suspected_ that Adrien had recently begun to fall for Marinette.

Which was why she had to bite back a small squee of delight at the scene that unfolded before her that morning.

Marinette was late again, which was normal, but something was amiss. Mlle Bustier had heard Marinette's name whispered more than once, in conjunction with Adrien's. Adrien was already there, looking paler and messier than usual, seemingly unaware of the sidelong glances his classmates kept throwing him. Nino and Alya were chatting with him, although their chatter seemed a touch strained, and Adrien was nodding along politely. Occasionally one of them would ask something along the lines of "are you _sure_ you're better?" and he'd roll his eyes and laugh it off.

Mlle Bustier frowned. Having been one of the first victims, she hadn't witnessed most of the akuma fight yesterday, and she hadn't had this class in the afternoon. But she had watched the footage that evening, and winced in sympathy when Lady Wifi had exposed Marinette's crush on Adrien and then proceeded to lock them in the closet together. She hoped things wouldn't be too awkward between the two teens. If Marinette turned up at all, that is.

She sighed and cleared her throat. She had work to do.

"I hope you all have your signed permission slips for the class trip," she said to the class at large. "Max, could you collect them for me please?"

There was a reluctant flurry of activity as students moved back to their designated seats and rummaged in their bags, handing the slips of paper to Max.

Adrien raised his hand. "I've left my bag in my locker," he said. "Can I go get it?"

Mlle Bustier nodded and Adrien got up to leave the classroom. He was halfway to the door when it banged open and Marinette careened into him. They bounced comically off each other and fell backwards onto the floor.

"Ow!" they both cried, sitting up and rubbing chins and foreheads. Then they saw each other and froze.

It looked for all the world like they were meeting for the first time, falling in love at first sight. Like something in a romance movie. The silence between them spread to the rest of the class, whose attention had been drawn by the commotion. Everyone's eyes flickered between Marinette's face and Adrien's, taking in the sudden similarities in their expressions: the same shy blush, the same sweet awe in their eyes, the same tension and uncertainty and want in their postures. The class held its collective breath, and it occurred to Mlle Bustier that perhaps she ought to take pity on them and break it, but something about the way they were looking at each other made her hesitate: they weren't embarassed. They were mesmerized.

Adrien moved first, pulling himself back up slowly, his gaze still locked on Marinette's. Once he was more or less upright, he held out a hand to help her up, and a tiny, hopeful smile graced the corner of his mouth as he waited for her reaction.

His smile echoed on her face as she reached up hesitantly to accept his hand, and when she was finally standing next to him, and they were still staring and smiling and blushing at each other, their hands dropped, still holding each other, and their fingers intertwined tightly, unmistakeably.

The class _exploded_. Whoops and cheers and whistles erupted from around the room, making the new couple jump and blush even harder, subconsciously moving closer to each other as they realized they were the center of attention. Alya was on them in seconds, hugging them both and screaming, soon to be joined by Nino and Rose, while the rest of the class jumped and shouted and hugged each other. Chloe's outraged screeches were drowned out by the general pandemonium, with Sabrina trying to calm her down, although she was unable to keep the smile off her face as she glanced at them.

Mlle Bustier, ever aware of the risk of an akuma around events like this one, noted Nathaniel's sad smile and Lila's pout. Nobody seemed devastated, though – she knew Chloe had a tendency to overdramatize, and she suspected her current reaction was more for show than anything else – so finally she called for quiet again and told everyone to go back to their seats.

Adrien had been blushing furiously into his hands for several minutes while Nino teased him relentlessly, before he remembered why he'd gotten up in the first place and had to ask Mlle Bustier for permission to leave again.

Mlle Bustier toned her grin down to a benevolent smile. "Try not to start a riot this time," she said. She had to bite back a laugh as he nodded and ran from the classroom, red-faced but beaming.

Tikki phased into Adrien's satchel and poked Plagg awake. "How are you feeling?" she whispered.

Plagg scowled. "I was dreaming of cheese," he complained. "Why did you wake me?"

"I was worried!"

"Well, there's no need. Your Lucky Charm healed me. Nice touch, by the way, making it a slice of camembert."

Tikki rolled her eyes. "I thought of you and that's what came out. I still can't believe it worked."

Plagg raised one whiskered eyebrow. "Was it not supposed to work?"

"Well, we've never done that before, have we?" she said. "It was a theory they found in the Guardian book."

"The Guardians who wrote that thing knew what they were doing," Plagg said, yawning. "Your kid's clever, I knew she'd find a way to heal me somehow. And with minimal damage this time!"

It was Tikki's turn to scowl. "That doesn't mean you can stuff your face with cheese and hope for the best! This can't happen again, Plagg!"

Plagg raised his paws appeasingly. "Okay, okay, Sugarcube, I'll be more careful. But for your information, I didn't stuff my face with cheese. Adrien had ordered me a rare one, and apparently it didn't agree with me."

Tikki shook her head. "They revealed their identities to each other because of this. I hope nothing bad will come of it."

"What do you mean, isn't this great? They can be together now!" Plagg nudged Tikki with his paw. "Don't tell me you're not happy for them because I won't believe you."

Tikki smiled begrudgingly. Their charges _were_ adorable. She still got that warm fuzzy feeling in her heart when she remembered their last kiss the night before; Adrien finally transformed back into Chat Noir and clinging to Marinette like a lifeline, Marinette in her pyjamas with her hands reverently cupping Chat Noir's cheeks like she'd found hidden treasure. Their eyes shining happily in the darkness, smiles and hushed voices not wanting it to end, even though they'd be seeing each other again in just a few hours.

Tikki had had to intervene eventually, shooing Chat Noir off the balcony and Marinette down to her bed. Marinette had whisper-squealed into her pillow for a good ten minutes before finally relaxing enough to lie still, and even then, Tikki doubted she'd really slept.

"Wan' shom cheej?" Plagg's question cut through her reminiscing. He had opened a box of camembert and was offering her some.

Tikki made a face. "Thanks, Stinky, but I think I'll go back to my macarons," she said.

"C'mon, stay with me!" said Plagg. "I was dormant for two days. Tell me what happened while I was sick!"

"Adrien didn't tell you?"

"Sort of. Between the yells and the hugs, I didn't really catch much of it."

Tikki smiled. "Well, you missed two akumas," she began. "One of them..."

The fire alarm went off, and they froze. The bag was jostled as Adrien stood with the rest of his classmates, and Tikki zipped back to her spot in Marinette's handbag as the word "akuma" echoed questioningly amongst the students. Marinette appeared to be busying herself with her school bag, probably stalling so she could transform once the class was deserted.

"Are they all gone?" she heard Adrien whisper close by.

Marinette giggled. "You're right, this is easier," she said.

"I'm right more often than you think, M'lady."

"Don't call me that when we're out of costume!" Marinette scolded. Tikki poked her head out of the purse in time to see Adrien's smirk – the one he usually reserved for when he was Chat Noir – turn into a pout.

"Fine," he said, before grinning again. "Guess I'll just have to think up new nicknames for you."

Marinette blushed and Adrien's eyes softened as he gazed at her. Tikki cleared her throat, unable to keep the smile off her face.

Marinette jumped. "Oh! Right, the akuma!"

Adrien laughed. "Ready, Plagg?"

Plagg flew out of his bag, threw a slice of camembert into the air and caught it, swallowing it down with one gulp. Both of the teens grimaced.

"Ready!"

"Plagg, claws out!"

"Tikki, spots on!"

The akuma was baby Auguste again. Ladybug was beginning to think that none of the times he'd been akumatized had been intentional on Hawkmoth's part. Now they knew how it was done, trapping and de-evilizing him was easy enough that they didn't even have to use Lucky Charm or Cataclysm, which gave them time to find Auguste's mother and hand him back to her, _and_ for her to treat them to ice cream.

By the time they'd finished and said their goodbyes, it was almost lunch time, and Ladybug was dead on her feet.

"I could sleep for a week," she complained as they wandered hand in hand over the rooftops in the direction of their school. They'd quickly decided not to show that they were together yet, in case someone smart (Alya) made the connection. As soon as they were out of sight on the roofs of Paris, though, they had gravitated towards each other like magnets.

"But then I wouldn't get to see you," whined Chat Noir.

"You'll live," she deadpanned. Knowing it was Adrien under the mask sent the blood to her cheeks whenever he flirted, but Ladybug had been happy to find that it hadn't much affected their banter.

"I won't, M'lady," Chat laid a paw against his forehead and adressed the sky dramatically. "Without you in my life, I would wither and die."

Ladybug snorted. "You'd live because you'd be sleeping too," she said. "I can tell you're not over your cold, Chat Noir. You need even more sleep than me right now."

"Wanna skip with me and sleep all afternoon?" He flashed her a wicked grin, and she gasped.

"Ad- _You_ of all people, skipping school?"

"I like school, but it's got nothing on spending time with you, Bugaboo." He stopped walking as they reached the edge of the roof they were on and stood facing her, pulling her to a stop as well to take her other hand. Part of her melted in the softness of his gaze.

"You have got to stop calling me Bugaboo," she said, smiling even as her nose scrunched up in mock-disgust.

"Never." He grinned. "And get ready because I'm gonna have a whole repertoire of nicknames for your civilian side."

"Nooo," she groaned.

"Oh _yes_ Princess."

"Adrien can't call me Princess, that's _your_ name for Marinette!"

"Chat Noir can't date Marinette, so Adrien gets to call you Princess."

She groaned again.

"C'mon, Princess. Cupcake. Snuggle Muffin."

"You are _not_ calling me Snuggle Muffin," she laughed, poking his chest without letting go of his hand. "Or Cupcake!"

"Why not? They're bakery themed!"

"Exactly," she said.

"_Mon p'tit chou à la crème?_"

"Urgh," she gagged, and he laughed.

"Fine, no baked goods. How about... _ma minette?_" he raised an eyebrow under his mask.

"I feel like that's a bit too Chat Noir themed," she said.

He was inching closer now, the laughter and fondness in his eyes slowly giving way to something even warmer.

_"Ma belle, ma douce, mon ange,"_ he murmured, as though daring to for the first time._"Mon coeur, mon amour, ma chérie." _The way her heart beat forward in her chest, as though pulling her towards him, surprised her. These were common terms of endearment, ones she'd heard many couples use. Her parents called each other "mon coeur" all the time. She would never have guessed that hearing them from _him_ could make her cheeks flush and her skin tingle and her breath catch in her throat.

She untangled her fingers from his only to tangle them in his hair instead, pulling him to her for a kiss, but he resisted at the last second, nudging her nose with his and pausing bare millimeters away from her lips. She whined and stood on her tiptoes to chase him, and he let out a low chuckle, teasing her with his breath. He wound his arms around her, closing all the spaces between their bodies. The contact awakened the embers he'd left under her skin the night before. His claws were tiny, tickling pinpricks through the fabric of her suit, and he ran one of them slowly up her spine, igniting soft trails of sparks in their wake. When his hand reached the nape of her neck he dragged his claw gently over the bare skin of her jawline, raising goosebumps on her neck, his thumbnail barely grazing her bottom lip. He was _right there_ and he wouldn't let her get to him. She met his eyes, pleading silently, and saw green fire.

_He's driving me crazy,_ she thought. _He's driving us both crazy._

"Chat..." she breathed – and then his mouth was on hers, hot and demanding, like she'd been teasing him and not the other way around. A moan escaped her and he returned it with a one of his own, so low and hungry it was almost a growl. Determined to give him a taste of his own medicine, she caught his lower lip between both of hers and ran the tip of her tongue experimentally along the length of it before pulling away: it worked – his claws grasped her tighter as he chased her lips, exacting revenge until she was putty in his claws.

By the time they pulled apart, gasping for breath, she was dizzy with heat and had no idea what time it was.

"We, should, probably eat something," she panted.

"I could eat you right now," he breathed into her neck, and she bit her lip to silence a breathy moan that would have probably set him off again.

"I mean it, Chat," she said, smiling. "Much as I would love to... keep doing this, our parents are expecting us for lunch."

Chat Noir groaned into her shoulder. "You're right and I hate it."

"Sorry," she giggled. "Would it make you feel better if you ate at my place?"

"I'd love to, but the condition for me going to school today was that I go back home at lunch time to take my medicine," he grumbled. "They're pretty strict when it comes to my health."

He sighed and pulled away from her, catching hold of her hands and pulling them both to his lips.

"I love you," he said, and his smile was warm like the sun. "I still can't believe this is real."

"Me neither," Ladybug replied, with a shy smile of her own. "I've been in love with you for so long, and I didn't even realize you loved me back."

"We're both guilty of that."

It took at least another ten minutes of kisses and sweet nothings for them to tear away from each other. By the time Ladybug detransformed in the park next to her house, there was only half an hour left until they'd see each other at school again.

"You're late," Sabine sing-songed, shaking a finger at her as she handed sandwiches to a customer.

"Sorry, _Maman_," said Marinette, kissing her mother. "Can I take a couple of the small quiches to go? I'll eat at school so I'm not late for class."

"Sure, honey, help yourself."

"Where's my kiss?" Her father mock-sulked from his place behind the till.

Marinette knew better than to try and squeeze in behind the counter at rush hour, so she blew him a kiss instead. "Love you, _Papa_."

"I love you too, honey," he said. "By the way, who's the second quiche for? Your boyfriend?"

Marinette blushed and grinned as she bagged the quiches. "Yep," she squeaked, and ran out of the shop, fleeing whoops and cheers from the customers as well as her parents.

She'd have to get used to the embarassment. Alya still felt bad about shutting them in the closet while she was akumatized, but that wouldn't last long, and Marinette had no doubt she'd be as merciless as Nino by tomorrow.

Adrien joined her as she reached the school steps.

"You didn't even eat, did you?" she accused him as they made their way back to class, ignoring the stares and whispers that followed them. News travelled fast, apparently.

"Mn," he answered noncommittally. She held up the pastry bag with a smirk, and his eyes lit up. "I love you so much," he said, grabbing the bag.

"Hey, one of those is for me!"

He grinned, blushing slightly. "Sorry. I just really like your food."

"I know," she said as they finished mounting the steps to their classroom. She eyed the door. "Ready for round two of relentless teasing from our so-called besties?"

"Bring it on," he replied through a mouthful of quiche.

When they entered, though, Alya was whispering to Nino, hunched over her phone. "Guys, get over here!" she hissed excitedly when she saw them. "You won't believe the scoop I just got!"

Marinette glanced at the photo on her phone and paled. Standing on the edge of a rooftop, quite far from the ground but clear as day, were Chat Noir and Ladybug, kissing like their lives depended on it.

"Oh my god," she whispered.

"Right?!" Alya squealed quietly.

"Looks like you two aren't the only ones who started dating recently," Nino teased, nudging Adrien with his elbow.

Adrien said nothing. He looked tense, and Marinette's stomach dropped. If _he_ was panicking, they were screwed.

Nino knew better. "Bro, I know you're holding back a pun. Just say it."

Alya looked up expectantly, and Adrien's eyes flitted to Marinette's, taking in her expression as it went from panic to horror. He bit back a grin.

_Don't you dare,_ she mouthed.

"Cat'souttathebag!"

She was going to kill him, she thought, as Alya's surprised laughter echoed around the room.

"Thanks for the headline," Alya giggled.

"No problem," Adrien replied, winking at Marinette. She rolled her eyes, relaxing. They could handle this.

Together, they could handle anything.


End file.
